


hard to get (easy to please)

by Damkianna



Category: The Firm (TV)
Genre: Antagonism, Bad Decisions, Canon-Typical Violence, Consent Issues, Denial of Feelings, Forced Cohabitation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Post-Canon, Protectiveness, Rescue, Shower Sex, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 12:03:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18964861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: They were drawing it out. They'd softened him up first, working him over a bit at a time until everything ached. Bruising, a split lip, a hot sharp throb in his cheekbone that probably wasn't an actual break. That hadn't been so bad.But they'd started to lay into him harder, and even without breaking out the brass knuckles or the boxcutters, it was—he'd started losing time, letting his swollen eyes fall shut. Sliding away from the pain, the fear, the feeling of his own blood seeping and sticking; and then getting jerked back into himself all at once by a kick to the ribs or a fist in his hair.(Or: Mitch is caught, beaten, and shot by the Russians. Joey rides to the rescue, and temporarily fakes Mitch's death in the bargain—but if they're going to stay under the radar while Mitch is recovering, they can't leave Joey's penthouse suite. Which might have been fine, except for the part where they've kind of sort of started having sex, and they aren't talking about it.)





	hard to get (easy to please)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/gifts).



> Despite the length, this actually has only the vaguest semblance of a plot—and by "plot" I mean "best halfway decent excuse I could come up with for forced proximity, doubling as a frame on which to hang a whole lot of introspection, smut, and failure to communicate". :D? I hope desperately that you enjoy it anyway, Sandrine, and that you've had a great F5K! ♥
> 
> All the medical care and crime in here is probably nonsense. References to Mitch running across a rooftop and taking a flying leap are in regards to the SIX WEEKS LATER shots the show ended on; this is set after that, and I made up a totally non-canonical explanation for what was going on there. This fic also pretends that Abby's pleasant young man in Kentucky didn't mind her breaking into offices after all, and that she and Mitch are in fact separated/effectively over (despite Mitch's defensiveness on the topic).

 

 

Mitch was starting to fade in and out a little, by the time it happened.

He almost didn't even notice. The Russians had had him for—had to be hours, at least. He'd have been tempted to think it was days, except he was still alive; if they'd had him that long, he probably wouldn't be.

They were drawing it out. They'd softened him up first, working him over a bit at a time until everything ached. Bruising, a split lip, a hot sharp throb in his cheekbone that probably wasn't an actual break. That hadn't been so bad.

But they'd started to lay into him harder, and even without breaking out the brass knuckles or the boxcutters, it was—he'd started losing time, letting his swollen eyes fall shut. Sliding away from the pain, the fear, the feeling of his own blood seeping and sticking; and then getting jerked back into himself all at once by a kick to the ribs or a fist in his hair.

He wished, dimly, that they'd just knock him out so he could let the whole thing pass him by. But these guys were professionals. They probably knew exactly how far they could go and still keep him conscious for it.

And then one of them reached down and hauled him up off the concrete, the better to murmur threatening Russian things to him, and that was when he saw the FBI agent.

He couldn't have said exactly what tipped him off. The man wasn't wearing a suit, wasn't flashing his badge. He was coming down the corridor past the room Mitch was in—being led, so he wasn't one of Karpov's guys. Not that that necessarily meant anything.

But Mitch had spent a hell of a lot of time around law enforcement of all stripes. And there was just something about the way the man looked, the way he held himself, that caught in Mitch's head. Military, or at least ex-. A cop? A Marshal—anything, anything, jesus, but if he could help Mitch get the hell out of here—

Mitch made a choked little noise without even meaning to—not trying to call out, no words in his head. Half dazed surprise, and half the way the guy holding him up had grabbed him by the throat. And the man glanced over, idle, halfway through a stride; looked him up and down, absently cataloguing, without so much as a hitch, and kept walking.

Mitch squeezed his eyes shut. Of course. God, he felt drunk on the pain, drunk and hungover at the same time, his brain wasn't fucking working: even if his wild guess was right, even if the guy _was_ law enforcement, if the Russians were letting him walk around in here then he was part of it. Facilitating it all, under the authority of the FBI. Or maybe just dirty, someone local Karpov had bought and paid for, but either way—either way, he wasn't exactly going to jump at the chance to give Mitch a hand.

Fuck, Mitch thought, and then he was shaken, and the hand around his throat squeezed harder; a burst of pain in his face, and the world spun around him, and then he hit the floor.

"—not permitted to enter Mr. Karpov's presence while armed, Agent Peterson," he heard, from somewhere really, really far away. "Our current arrangements with your superiors notwithstanding."

"Yes, all right," and someone sighed impatiently, and then there was a ding. Elevator; to take him upstairs, wherever Karpov was, a nice safe distance from any hapless lawyers who might or might not be getting murdered in the basement.

A boot nudged Mitch, hard. "Still with us, Mr. McDeere?"

"Go fuck y'rself," Mitch managed to slur out, along with a mouthful of blood from where his teeth had cut his cheek open; and someone laughed, and then they started hitting him again.

They'd alternated between asking him questions and a contemplative silence—giving him the chance to think things over, to decide whether the answers were worth dying for. The Russian mob was generous that way, Mitch had learned.

And now, apparently, it was time for more questions.

Mitch didn't let himself listen to them, didn't want to open himself up to the temptation of even thinking about answering them. It was a trap anyway: if he allowed himself to start believing that they'd stop hurting him, that if he just came up with the right answer then maybe he wouldn't die down here, that was the beginning of the end.

Because they wouldn't. Why should they? If they got whatever it was they wanted out of him, they'd just kill him anyway. Keeping his mouth shut was his best bet. The more they knew there was left to beat out of him, the less likely they'd get sick of this, shoot him in the face, and call it a day. And besides—

Besides, he didn't _want_ to. After the first half-hour or so, he'd dug down deep inside himself and discovered a well of intense pettiness, stubborn professional pride. What the hell kind of cross-examination was this supposed to be, anyway? As if he'd be stupid enough to slip up on the stand, give the prosecution what they were looking for. Please.

He just hoped Joey appreciated it. Maybe when they were done, they'd dump whatever was left of Mitch on Joey's doorstep as a warning. Maybe Joey would be willing to take the five minutes to assign some guys to bury him, or at least let Louis know what had happened.

Actually, Mitch thought blearily, that probably wasn't fair. Joey would—Joey would be pissed, most likely. And even if it was just going to be because of all the effort he'd gone to, pushing levers and pulling strings, forcing Mitch an inch at a time into the right position to help him out with Patrick's case, that was still kind of satisfying to think about. That Joey wouldn't let it rest, wouldn't let it go. Because when did he ever? He'd make Karpov regret it one way or another, even if it was just to make a point; even if Mitch wasn't alive to see it.

 

 

Peterson hadn't come back down yet by the time the shooting started.

It took longer than it should have for Mitch to even realize that was what it was. He was waiting for the ding, that was all; wanting to see how long he could stay conscious, whether he'd even be able to tell when the elevator came back down.

He thought that it was just his ear, at first. That maybe one of them had gotten him in the side of the head a couple times too many—that that weird muffled crackling sound wasn't something anyone but Mitch himself could hear.

But then they paused, standing over him where he lay on the floor. Murmured something to each other in Russian, and then suddenly the sound got a lot louder. Loud enough to recognize as gunfire; gunfire, and a lot of shouting that was also in Russian, and then suddenly one of them had a boot on his chest and was shouting at _him_ , and he had no idea why.

There was a rush of sound, and he thought for a second he'd gotten kicked again—it barely even hurt, or at least not more than the rest of him. Impact, pressure. The boot was gone, he realized dimly, but he was—he still couldn't really breathe, all the air knocked out of him.

And then he did manage to drag in a breath somehow, and had to clutch belatedly at the tight knot of _agony_ at one side of his chest.

Jesus. Jesus, they'd shot him—

And then, suddenly, incongruously, he was looking at Joey.

He blinked, with the one eye that still mostly opened. He was—Joey had clutched him by the front of his bloody shirt and pulled him up off the floor. He _did_ look pissed, and Mitch was distantly pleased to have been right about that; he looked infuriated, actually, incandescent, gazing down at Mitch with his jaw working intently, pale eyes brilliant.

And he was talking, too. Shouting.

"—you tell them? Huh? Come on, McDeere—"

He was shouting at Mitch.

Mitch grimaced, flailing up to grab at Joey's wrist with the hand that wasn't already occupied trying to push all the screaming pain in his chest back down where it belonged. God, it was so hard to think; he felt dazed, sick to his stomach, almost petulant. Why was Joey mad at _him_?

"Joey," he croaked out.

"What did you give them?" Joey said again, sharper, and shook Mitch a little—the jolt of it blazed like fire, whited out his vision, and he sucked in a whining breath and almost coughed it right back out into Joey's face. Fuck, that hurt.

"Nothing," he said. "I didn't—nothing. Joey—"

Something passed across Joey's face, something Mitch wouldn't have been able to name even if he hadn't been squinting up at it out of one eye with a concussion and a half, plus a gunshot wound.

"Fuck you," Joey bit out, and dropped him; he made a wet smacking sound against the concrete, and Christ, he didn't understand any of this—

The sound of the gun was just as loud in Mitch's ears as it had been the first time this had happened. At least it was the cement floor and not Mitch's bar certificate that had caught the bullet this time—so close to Mitch's shoulder that he felt the sting of half a dozen little chips of cement, catching him in the neck.

He didn't flinch. He didn't have it in him. He lay there and let his eyes fall shut, and if Joey wanted to finish him off, then he might as well just do it; it wasn't like it mattered whether Mitch was looking while he did it.

But Joey didn't double-tap him in the head and throw him in a dumpster. It was almost quiet, for a long beat, except for the groaning coming from one of the Russians. At least they'd gotten shot too, Mitch thought. That was good.

And then Joey said, "All right, come on, get him out of here," cool and disinterested; and there were hands on Mitch's shoulders, his arms—Joey's guys, half-dragging him.

It hurt everywhere, being pulled on like that. But it hurt extra in the hot screaming place where Mitch's chest and shoulder used to be, and suddenly there just wasn't room in his head for anything else. He couldn't move, he couldn't think, he couldn't make a sound. He hung there and let them tug him along, dead weight. Maybe he _was_ dead, he thought dimly. Maybe he was dead and he just didn't know it yet, and all that was left to do was let the dark drag him down.

 

 

He got jerked back into himself, abrupt, excruciating, and at first he had no idea why. The ground was gone, he was—they'd lifted him up, he realized blurrily, and god, god, it hurt so much—

"Shut up," somebody snapped. "Come on, come on! Hurry _up_."

It all eased enough to let him breathe, when he was allowed to sink down into the—the seat, that's what it was, the broad back seat of a large car. And then, abruptly, it was so much worse, a white-hot spike driven through him, as he was grabbed and moved, propped up, something pressing down hard against his chest right where it hurt the most.

"Hold still, goddamn you," Joey spat at him. "You with me, McDeere? Come on, Mitch," and his free hand caught Mitch's face; the light, bright sting of the slap was so different from every other way Mitch was hurting that it worked, and he gasped and blinked that one eye half-open, and almost managed to get Joey's face in focus.

Joey looked like shit.

"You—look like shit," Mitch coughed out, and Joey huffed something that wasn't really a laugh out his nose, mouth pressed into a pale thin line, and looked at his face instead of whatever horrible sucking wound was in his chest.

"Yeah, well," Joey said. "I could say the same to you, pal," and then he moved his hands, pressed harder, and didn't seem to care at all that it made Mitch hiss weakly in protest. "Didn't think you'd catch on so quick, but that was fine. You did fine." And then, shaking his head a little as if in admiration, incomprehensible: "You're a born liar, Mitch."

Mitch swallowed, and then swallowed again. It was—it didn't taste right. His mouth didn't taste right. "Thanks," he said, and couldn't even remember why he was saying it.

"Sure," Joey said. "Come on, come on, stay with me. What did you tell them?"

"What?"

"We're out, we're clear, it's all good. Nobody's going to touch you. Okay?"

This was a blatant lie, considering how hard Joey was leaning on him, pushing and pushing and pushing at his chest. Like he was trying to get the pain back inside, too, Mitch thought, fuzzy. Like he knew how much was spilling out, how hot Mitch was burning with it; like he was trying to help.

"Nobody's going to touch you," Joey repeated. "But I need to know what you said. I need to know what you told them, or I can't—"

"Nothing," Mitch said, blurry, bewildered. "You—already asked. I—" and god, why was this so hard? Why couldn't he catch his breath? "—told you. Nothing."

Joey was staring at him, and he didn't know why. He let his eyes fall shut, sank down into himself a little, and god, that was better. That was so much easier, just leaving the pain up there on the surface and sliding down away from it—

"Hey. _Hey_. McDeere, I am talking to you. What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Mitch grimaced and tried to twist his face away, but it was—it didn't matter. Joey was right there, pressed up against him, impossible to ignore.

Just like always, Mitch thought, and for a single inane instant he almost wanted to smile.

"You kidding me?" Joey was murmuring in his ear, voice deceptively soft, tone sharp and savage. "Huh? What the fuck do you think you're doing, trying to pull this shit on me? Go ahead, you bastard. Go ahead and fucking die—"

And Mitch—Mitch couldn't just let that slide. He gathered himself, coughed and wet his lip even though it was already wet, split and bloody; and he fumbled one hand up and caught Joey by the arm, and rasped out, "Go fuck yourself."

"Oh, yeah?" Joey said, easy, goading.

"Yeah," Mitch bit out. "I'm not—snuffing it in your—getaway car," and then he had to stop to breathe again, as much air as he could suck in around the thing that was wrong with his chest; but he dug his fingernails into the thought, didn't let it slip away, until he could finish: "—so you can—dump my body in a ditch somewhere, and—scot-free—"

He'd said that wrong, dropped some words, something. But Joey seemed to have gotten his drift.

Or maybe he hadn't. He didn't look the way Mitch might have expected. He looked grimly triumphant, eyes glittering, mouth twisting up into something that was almost a smile. "That's right," he said. "That's right, you're not."

The car swayed a little, sharp turn, and Joey lurched, forehead almost brushing Mitch's. The motion had made him press harder, too, and Mitch groaned through his teeth and couldn't hold his head up anymore—let it tip forward, against what he realized distantly was the lee of Joey's shoulder.

"Mitch," Joey said. " _Mitch_ ," but this time it wasn't going to be enough. He couldn't hold on, and Joey wasn't going to be able to drag him back.

Maybe he was headed for that ditch after all, he thought, and then everything went away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Fuck," Joey said, and twisted around to look over his shoulder without taking his hands off the bundled-up jacket pressed to McDeere's chest. "Get the doc to the Grand, _now_."

"Already on her way, boss," Sal said, quick, soothing; and Joey barely managed to keep from snarling at him in return. He just—he didn't _want_ to be fucking soothed. He wanted McDeere to stop bleeding out all over his leather seats.

He squeezed his eyes shut and blew out a breath, pressed down harder, harder, and didn't think at all about the wet scrunch of the jacket under his hands, the blood seeping out over his knuckles.

"Fine," he bit out, instead of all the shit he wanted to say. "Just—tell Leo to step on it, all right?"

"You got it, boss," Sal said, and shifted around, thumbed the button that would let him talk to Leo without lowering the divider. Best practice; odds of anybody glancing in through the windshield, only untinted window in the whole car, and catching sight of McDeere were pretty goddamn low, but low wasn't zero.

And considering McDeere's track record so far, Joey wasn't real interested in taking chances.

He murmured a quiet blue streak into McDeere's ear, even though McDeere couldn't hear him anymore; just for the sake of getting to say it, the grit of the words mean and satisfying between his teeth. Threw in some Italian for the hell of it, when the English wasn't cutting it anymore.

Jesus. All the effort he'd gone to, keeping this motherfucking asshole alive, and what did he get for it? McDeere, skipping off with barely a by-your-leave into the tender care of the US Marshals. Who'd promptly fucked it up—or let McDeere fuck it up, same difference. Anybody who knew McDeere knew he had a thing for charging off and landing himself right in the middle of the biggest mess he could find. Somebody had blinked, had blinked and given him an opening, and whatever it was he'd gotten it in his head he needed to do, he'd ditched the Marshals and he'd gone and done it.

Which had somehow ended with McDeere _stealing files_ from the prosecutor's office, and then making a flying leap off the fucking roof before it exploded behind him.

Not that Joey had gotten to witness that part personally. But he'd had two of his guys watching the prosecutor already. Just good sense, taking the time to figure out whether Karpov was working an angle there too.

Except if Karpov had an angle he was working with the prosecutor, apparently it had come with an incendiary on the side.

The Russians had found McDeere first, which Joey was still pretty pissed about. Had found him and hauled him off and made mincemeat out of him. And it had been on the drive over, with the bright cold clarity that sometimes came with rage, that Joey had realized what he'd need to do when he got there.

He'd decided—he didn't know what he'd decided. He'd barely been thinking at all, by the time they'd arrived; by the time he heard the shot, and saw McDeere crumple to the floor. He'd watched himself do it like he was somebody else, play-acting his way through it like all that mattered to him had been what McDeere knew, what he might have given up.

And it had seemed only fair that McDeere was finally fucking cooperating, doing exactly what Joey needed him to do. Protesting, slurred, almost incoherent, so Joey could scoff at it, all cool and disbelieving, and shoot at the floor just beside McDeere's head.

The Russians had already been down, by then; Joey had been real careful to make sure at least one of them was still alive. Given what they'd heard, what they'd seen—they'd think McDeere was dead, that Joey had come to plug a dangerous leak. Wouldn't stick for long, but at least it would give him and McDeere a little breathing room.

As long as McDeere kept breathing, anyway.

He still was, so far—he'd passed out, that was all, half-cushioned on Joey's shoulder, nose against the side of Joey's throat. Probably fucking drooling all over Joey's suit, which would bother Joey more except right now it was coming second to how McDeere was _bleeding_ all over Joey's suit, and this stupid fucking suit jacket didn't seem to be doing a whole lot to slow him down.

"How is this even my problem, huh?" Joey said to McDeere. "Should've known you'd make me regret it. You had one job, _one_ goddamn job, you son of a bitch."

McDeere, predictably, didn't answer.

"And now look at this fucking mess," Joey said.

Not that it was all on McDeere. Oh, most of it, sure. But Karpov—Karpov should have fucking known better, Joey thought viciously. Karpov should never have dared to lay a finger on McDeere; and now, _twice_ , first Kurylenko and then this. Joey was going to burn his entire goddamn operation to the ground.

Which was going to be a little easier to pull off if McDeere really hadn't told them anything.

He'd had no reason to keep his mouth shut—less than. He'd had no reason not to throw Karpov a bone, give up whatever he could think of and then some if it would save his own skin. McDeere wasn't stupid; he could've come up with a way to dole it out, Karpov's own Scheherezade—sing a bar at a time, smart canary, never the whole aria at once. He could've figured out how to keep Karpov from killing him, at least for a while.

But he hadn't. Joey had expected that line, inside. But out here in the car, after Joey'd gone to all that effort? After Joey'd demonstrated unmistakably that he wanted McDeere back alive, gun in his hand and McDeere at his feet, shooting to miss? There'd been no reason why McDeere should want to lie to him about it, no reason for McDeere to be afraid Joey would make an example out of him for talking.

So maybe it was true. Maybe he hadn't said a word.

Not that it meant anything, except that McDeere might be stupider than Joey had realized. Because—yeah, all right, Joey could see it after all, if he turned his head and squinted: McDeere and his precious _integrity_ , the infuriating pretension of it; always wanting to make sure his squeaky goddamn hands stayed clean. Probably wanted to pretend he didn't even have anything to say, didn't know enough about Joey or his business to talk. Never mind that he was up to his neck in Patrick's case, and that that was the thing Karpov probably cared about the most, right now.

Fucking McDeere, Joey thought, and pressed the fucking jacket tighter against the hole in McDeere's chest, and listened to McDeere: breathing, breathing. At least for now.

 

 

The hotel wasn't actually called the Grand, but that was the name they used—so it wouldn't matter if somebody overheard them, wouldn't give away where they were going. And it _was_ pretty grand, if Joey said so himself, especially with the arrangements they'd been willing to make for the visiting Mr. Morolto. Welcome to DC.

The reserved side entrance and a discreet freight elevator got him and the two guys who were carrying McDeere inside and up to the penthouse without anybody the wiser; or at least not anybody who wasn't getting paid a real nice tip tonight.

The whole suite was Joey's, to use as he pleased. Sal hadn't lied—Dr. Andreu was there already, waiting. The second the elevator doors opened and she saw McDeere, she was moving, snapping out orders in that steady efficient way doctors probably learned after enough time in the ICU or whatever.

"—and—Mr. Morolto?"

Joey blinked and met her eyes. Andreu waited until he had, until she knew he was paying attention, before she tilted her head at the bed.

"What? Yeah, yeah, of course. Whatever you need. I'll get somebody to burn the sheets later if I have to."

So McDeere quit bleeding on Nick and Freddy and got started bleeding on the bed instead. Damn shame, bed that size, thousand-count sheets; McDeere had better fucking appreciate all this.

And after that it was—it wasn't like Joey could help any. Andreu was doing what he paid her for, and if she needed spare hands she had Nick and Freddy. Maybe McDeere would make it or maybe he wouldn't. Nothing left to do but wait and find out which it would be.

Joey was about to go for his phone, check in with Sal and everybody, and ended up just staring at his hands. The suit jacket—his suit jacket—was hanging off the edge of the bed, discarded, sticky with McDeere's blood; and his hands were fucking covered in it, too.

Felt abruptly like—like some kind of metaphor, or maybe an omen. Joey sneered, reflexive, and went into the spotless, gleaming, cavernous bathroom to go wash it off. He wasn't any fucking Lady Macbeth; just getting it out from under his nails, off his palms and the pads of his fingers so he wouldn't get it all over his phone, was good enough for him. The water came out warm, and McDeere's blood had started to cool, so it was—it all evened out, really. He could hardly even feel the difference, except maybe the blood was thicker, tackier.

It was fine.

He wiped his hands off in one of the huge fluffy hotel towels, casual twists of his wrists, and didn't look in the mirror. And then when he was done he pulled out his phone right there, and called Sal.

Sal had plenty to tell him about how it had gone—they'd had four teams working together at once for this little snatch-and-grab, trying to hit the Russians coming and going, distract them enough so Karpov couldn't bring the hammer down on Joey when it counted. There had been some injuries, gunshot wounds, one guy stabbed but he'd probably make it.

Joey stood there and listened, and breathed in slow, and mostly didn't want to punch anything anymore.

"Okay," he said, when Sal was done. "Find anything interesting?"

"Yeah, boss. Few things you might want to take a look at."

"All right, well, have somebody bring it all over, would you? Might be something in there we can use." Not likely, but possible, and at this point Joey would take anything he could get on Karpov.

"Sure thing, boss," Sal said, and then Joey hung up, because they were done; because there wasn't any good reason to keep Sal on the phone. He just—

He just didn't want to go back out there.

He bit the inside of his cheek and shook his head at himself, sharp. Christ, he needed to get a goddamn grip.

He went to the sitting room, the kitchen. Just to have a look around, because it had been a while, and to make sure the place was stocked. He went through the cupboards, the refrigerator; checked the whole suite over, even though his guys had already been through it probably half a dozen times.

He caught himself about to start over from the beginning, and made himself sit down instead. And then it was—there was nothing to do but wait.

Joey had never been much good at being patient.

By the time Andreu finally came back out, Joey wasn't even sure what it was he expected to hear. If McDeere had died, he'd taken his sweet time about it; but if Andreu needed to move him, needed more supplies than whatever she'd had Sal bring when he got her set up, Joey would've hoped she'd have brought it up a little sooner.

But what Andreu said, as she stripped off her bloody gloves, was, "He was lucky. Bullet went right through his shoulder; didn't hit the lung, didn't hit the shoulder blade." She fixed Joey with a gimlet eye. "If he'd needed major surgery, there wouldn't have been anything I could do about it here."

"But he didn't," Joey said.

"But he didn't," Andreu conceded. "He was in bad enough shape before someone shot him, but setting aside the bullet hole, the worst he's got are a handful of cracked ribs and bruised bones. He'll live. _If_ you can keep him in that bed for at least a week, preferably ten days. He needs rest, fluids, and the opportunity to recover at his own pace. You'll need to check on the wound, keep it clean, change the bandages—"

"All right, all right," Joey said, waving a hand at her. "You got instructions, write them up. I'll make sure it gets done."

Andreu's mouth was flat, and she was looking at him kind of narrowly. "Mr. Morolto," she said, in a real even tone. "I know better than to ask, by now. But I do take the welfare of my patients seriously, even if I'm also willing to let you pay me massive piles of money to decide which patients those are."

"And in that case," Joey said, as patiently as he could, "we are on the same page, because I went through a hell of a lot of trouble to keep that stupid son of a bitch in there alive, and I'm not going to let sepsis screw that up for me now. Capisce?"

Even as he said it, he was still watching her face; and something happened there, some little startled flicker around her eyes or her mouth, that suddenly made it obvious what she'd been thinking.

"I didn't do that to him," Joey heard himself say, too fast. "I didn't."

Which was true, except in all the ways it wasn't: except in all the ways Karpov would never have given half a shit about Mitch McDeere if he hadn't been working Patrick's case on Joey's say-so.

Andreu's stare softened a little, which Joey hadn't really known it could do; and she said, "All right, Mr. Morolto," and then, more briskly, "I'll get you those instructions, and you follow them to the letter." And then she raised an eyebrow and added, "Capisce?", which sounded hilarious coming from her.

She told Joey he could go in, as long as he didn't wake McDeere up or make him do calisthenics or anything. Nick and Freddy were just filing out, hands full of bloody towels and shit that Andreu had made them hold for her, and Joey eased in past them through the door to the bedroom and then stopped.

It was weird. McDeere looked—fine, almost. Just because he'd been so obviously fucked up before, blood all over him, and now Andreu had cleaned him up, thick white bandage that hadn't even had time to start soaking through. The bruising was really starting to show now, though, stark against the sheets. Clean sheets, Joey realized slowly; Andreu must've had Nick and Freddy strip the bed, remake it, once McDeere was stable enough for it. The mental image of them obediently doing hospital corners, following Andreu's crisp implacable instructions, was enough to make the corner of Joey's mouth twitch.

And then he took a step closer. The really unsettling thing was how _still_ McDeere was, lying there like that all pale and unconscious. There was an IV in his arm, too, with the bag taped up to one of the bedposts—and somehow it was easier to picture him sitting up and impatiently pulling it out than to look at him passed out cold, not even knowing it was there. In Joey's experience, McDeere was always moving: doing something, arguing with him, glaring or shouting or making a point, refusing to back down.

Which was exactly how McDeere had gotten himself into this shit. But at least now—

At least now Joey had him. Instead of the Russians, instead of the Marshals; shut up in here, safe, where nobody— _nobody_ —could fucking touch him, except Joey.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It took a long time for Mitch to come around.

Which was fine with him, because he really didn't want to. He was vaguely aware that there was something wrong with him, from way down there in the dark—that he ached all over, that everything hurt. But it didn't feel like it was his problem, when it was that far away.

The closer it got, the nearer he surfaced, the sharper it all was. And he didn't _want_ that knife-edged clarity, but it was a vicious loop: the more pain he felt, the further it dragged him out of sleep, and the further out of sleep he got dragged, the more it hurt.

Even once he was mostly awake, he couldn't convince himself to open his eyes. His eyelids felt heavy, sticky, crusted together in that way that meant he'd really _slept_ , and it was like he was made out of lead, a tin man with no oil can in sight; every part of him felt stiff and heavy, like he'd creak if he moved.

The only nice thing about it, he thought blearily, was the bed he was lying on. At least he thought it was a bed. And it was huge. He could tell from the way the mattress dipped around him that he wasn't anywhere close to the edge of it, and the sheets felt light and cool and clean against his arms.

His brain, his whole head, seemed slow and sticky; it took a long time for each thought he had to form, each idle observation building up all the way into an impression he could actually hold onto for a second, and then just as slowly dissipating. So he lay there for a while, thinking about the bed, and about the sheets, about the dim sense of light beyond his eyelids and how shallowly he had to breathe to keep whatever was wrong with his chest from flaring up too hot to bear. And then, eventually, it occurred to him to wonder just where the fuck he even was.

Because he didn't know. He didn't—what did he remember?

The Russians, he thought, and flinched helplessly, involuntarily; and fuck, oh, god, _god_ , that hurt—

"Back with us, princess?"

Mitch made a hoarse displeased sound and pried one of his eyes open just a crack—just far enough to confirm that his ears hadn't deceived him.

Because standing over the vast soft sea of the bed, tilting his head and peering down at Mitch inquiringly, was Joey.

"Don't get me wrong," Joey said, "I'd be happy to leave you there as long as you want. But I told the doc I didn't think you'd appreciate a catheter, and there's no way I'm emptying your bedpans. And you've been sacked out for like ten hours, so I'm guessing you probably need to piss."

Mitch hadn't thought about it at all until Joey said it, couldn't have sworn he'd be able to pick the sensation out of all the other aches and pains clamoring for his attention; and then abruptly he definitely could.

He let his eye fall shut again and twisted his face away from Joey, and Joey took that for the answer it was.

The bed _was_ huge, and Mitch was—he had an IV, he realized dimly, needle in the back of his hand and the bag of fluid already in Joey's. Joey seemed to be moving impossibly fast; it felt like Mitch blinked and he was talking again, flipping the IV line impatiently out of the way, and then Mitch blinked again and he had an arm under Mitch's shoulders, and he was pulling—

"Fuck," Mitch gasped, and Joey chuckled in his ear like the smug bastard he was and kept pulling.

And of course he wouldn't stop just because it hurt so much Mitch couldn't breathe. Somehow Mitch's feet were on the floor, and then Joey was levering him up—for a second everything spun, and Mitch felt grimly sure he was about to fall right back down and take Joey with him. But then the world settled tentatively back into place, and the darkness receded from the edges of Mitch's vision, and he managed to kind of sort of take about half a step.

God. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, like what the hell had happened—where they were, where _Karpov_ was, just what exactly Joey had done and what was going to happen next. But it took every single ounce of concentration Mitch had to keep his head up and pointing the right direction, to move at all. He was—normally he'd probably have had second thoughts at least, and probably third and fourth, about leaning on Joey this way. But like this it was all he could do just to kind of half-assedly help Joey hold him up, and Joey's arm felt strong and steady by comparison, Joey's shoulder bearing Mitch's weight with an ease that seemed like illusion. Had Mitch ever moved that casually, that carelessly? Right now the answer felt like a resounding "no".

Wherever they were, an apartment or something, it was enormous—but the bathroom wasn't too far, even like this. They shuffled over the tile together, and Mitch felt a weird spark of gratitude at the cold smoothness of it under his feet: he _could_ feel something besides pain after all.

"Promise I won't look," Joey said, bland and mocking, still holding up the IV bag.

And Mitch didn't want to talk—wasn't sure his throat would let him, even if he was willing to try it with what felt like a lot more stitches in his lip than he was comfortable with—but he leaned heavily on the edge of the counter and managed to angle a flat one-eyed glare at Joey.

Who _definitely_ looked, and caught Mitch's eye after with an unapologetic and assessing face. Jesus.

Mitch rolled his eyes, and then wished he hadn't at the brief sharp ache that it sent rocketing through his head. But it wasn't like he could get back to the bed without Joey. And it was—it was an uncomfortable comfort, twisted up and oxymoronic, to be able to rely on Joey's hands against him to hold him up, Joey's arm around him whenever he wavered.

By the time they made it, Mitch would have sworn they'd gone half a mile. Joey lowered him down and then turned away and did something with the IV bag, and Mitch couldn't even make himself look, couldn't even manage to pay attention. Just crossing the room had wiped him out completely. He lay there and breathed, and waited mindlessly for the worst of the screaming ache to ease and pass him by.

Finally he found it in himself to tip his head a little. Joey wasn't looking at him, still fucking around with the IV, trying to get it taped back onto the bedpost where it had been. But then he was done, and he was—he looked strange, oddly sober and severe; and for some reason it occurred to Mitch just then to wonder whether there was another bed around here, whether Joey had slept at all during those ten hours.

And then Joey glanced down at Mitch, and his lip curled, and he said tauntingly, "Next I suppose Your Highness will be wanting some ice chips."

Mitch took a risk and licked his lips, and when the deep sharp sting of all the stitched-up splits didn't get too much worse, he took another risk and made himself say, "Yeah, actually."

It came out cracked and rasping, but audible. And Joey must have understood it, because he made a face and narrowed his eyes, and then turned and went out. When he came back, he had a small paper cup.

"Why, thank you, Nurse Morolto," Mitch scraped out; and Joey laughed, quick and sharp, startled, like maybe he hadn't quite meant to do it, and then shook his head.

"Now, far be it from me to patronize you, Mitch," he said, "but the evidence suggests you were hit in the head more than once, so I figure I'd better ask. How much do you remember?"

Mitch thought about it. "Enough," he said. "Russians. Shot me." He had to stop then, grimace and clear his throat—but the first ice chip had done wonders, because when he spoke again he sounded a lot closer to normal. "Then you came in and shot the floor."

"Karpov had to think you were dead," Joey said, breezy, and shrugged. "Now he does."

Mitch stared at him. Was _that_ what that whole rigmarole had been about? Jesus.

"Which is why," Joey added, already starting to cross the room again, "we're going to be staying here for the foreseeable future. I bought us some breathing room, but if you show up in a public hospital right under Karpov's nose, that eats up the whole tab and then some, if you follow me." He turned a little to gesture toward Mitch, and Mitch belatedly looked down to see—oh. There was a swath of bandaging covering almost his entire left shoulder; and now that he thought about it, the worst spikes of pain in his chest had been high, to the left.

So his patchy memory was right: he _had_ been shot. No wonder he felt like shit.

"Besides," Joey was saying, "you've still got one hell of a hole in you. Move you around too much and you'll just start leaking all over the place again." He'd turned away again, and then he was—there was something over there, at the side of the room where he'd gone, but Mitch was exhausted just thinking about lifting his head far enough to see what it was.

And he didn't have to, anyway, because Joey stepped back into his field of view after a second.

"Wasn't a total loss, though," he said, and tossed—

Tossed a _gun_ onto the bed.

Mitch raised an eyebrow.

"Got you a present," Joey murmured, deceptively sweet, and then picked the gun up again, flipped it over, as if inspecting it—like he hadn't had plenty of time for that, like he didn't already know exactly what it was. And, sure enough, the next thing he said was, "Glock 23, finger groove and rail," and then, when Mitch failed to show signs of enlightenment, "It's standard issue, Mitch. Service weapon. FBI."

Mitch stared at it. So that man—what had Karpov's muscle called him? Peterson? He'd been an FBI agent after all.

"Not exactly evidence we're going to be able to hold up in court," Joey said, setting it down on the bedside table. "But it's like my mama always said: you've got to know who your enemies are before you can knee them in the balls."

Mitch eyed him. On the one hand, Joey was saying it in that sugar-sincere way that meant he was particularly full of shit. On the other hand, though, Mitch wouldn't necessarily put it past Mrs. Morolto, whoever she might have been—to pet her little bambino's hair and smile down at him, and murmur exactly that, except in Italian.

"Anyway, point is, if there's a chance Karpov can set the FBI on us whenever he wants, leaving this suite with you—" and Joey waved a desultory hand at him, the gesture encompassing not only Mitch's shoulder but his face and head, his ribs, and the legs he'd been tottering around on so feebly not ten minutes ago. "—like that is not an option."

Mitch let his eyes fall shut. Christ. "How long?"

"Doc said a week, absolute minimum. Ten days would be better."

Ten _days_? Shut up in a hotel suite with _Joey_ , while he was tired and in pain, practically immobilized; god, it sounded like hell.

"But Louis and the Marshals—"

"That's a terrible name for a band," Joey said thoughtfully, but his eyes had already gone sharp, the line of his mouth thin and flat and hard. "The US Marshals. Really. You think the Russians wouldn't maybe take a closer look at a hospital room with four plainclothes guys acting 'casual' in the hallway, you got another think coming.

"Besides—and please, Mitch, my friend, do correct me if I'm wrong—the Marshals were the ones who were supposed to be keeping an eye on you yesterday. Which ended with me having to take twenty guys and go in guns blazing to drag you out of—"

"That wasn't Louis's fault," Mitch managed, though it came out reedier than he wanted it to. "I left custody without authorization—"

But Joey barked out a laugh, and shook his head. "Making my arguments for me? How generous," he sneered. "That's exactly my goddamn point, Mitch. Apparently I'm the only one in this entire city who's going to be able to keep you in one piece. Because I don't care about your fucking feelings, or what you _want_ , or whatever other bullshit you're going to try to sell me." He leaned in a little, voice soft but enunciation viciously sharp, like each word was a sentence in itself: "You are not leaving this room."

Bullshit, Mitch wanted to say. Like hell could Joey keep him here, this was—he couldn't _do_ this, couldn't make Mitch stay here. It was ridiculous that he was trying, and kidnapping besides.

But—god, his head hurt. He meant to argue, he really did. But instead somehow his swollen eyes had fallen shut again, and he couldn't quite string the pile of words inside him into a sentence, couldn't quite get them out of his mouth.

As if from a distance, he heard Joey sigh. "Just get some goddamn sleep, will you," Joey said, more quietly, and the words were harsh but the tone wasn't.

It was vaguely frustrating to think he was about to do exactly what Joey had told him to—because that wasn't why. It wasn't like he was _listening_ to Joey. Joey was taking advantage of sheer coincidence, that was all; and then he lost his grip on even that sulky, petty thought, and slipped under.

 

 

* * *

 

 

That was how it went, for a few days.

Not so bad, all things considered. They didn't kill each other; didn't even end up threatening to. McDeere kept on needing help to get to the bathroom, and Joey kept giving it to him. He graduated from ice chips to water, once he could keep one hand steady enough to drink it without spilling. Soup, too, whenever he stayed awake long enough for Joey to shovel a little into him.

But mostly it probably went okay just because McDeere was sleeping all the fucking time. Took all the fun out of arguing with him when he wasn't awake to hear it.

And when he _was_ awake, it just—didn't seem sporting, somehow. His face was vibrantly black and blue, the first day or so, and then warmed up to more of a purple shade, which mostly only managed to make the few unbruised spans of skin look even paler by contrast. McDeere got out of breath so easily, and kept putting an absent hand to his bare ribs whenever he tried to catch it again; they'd bruised, too, his ribs and his sides, in patterns Joey knew for the bootmarks they were.

Made Joey's skin itch, looking at McDeere like that. All quiet and sallow, diminished. One of the things Joey'd always hated him for was the—the _space_ he took up; the way it didn't matter where he was standing, it always felt like he was right in Joey's face, pushing and pushing and never letting up.

So he kept his mouth shut, mostly, and fed McDeere his damn soup.

That was weird, too. McDeere could drink all right, but holding a bowl _and_ a spoon steady took two hands, and with a hole through his shoulder, McDeere could only really use one.

He liked the idea of Joey feeding him about as much as Joey liked it. But, as Joey hadn't hesitated to point out to him, McDeere starving to death kind of defeated the purpose of all this bullshit they were putting themselves through.

So: McDeere ate his goddamn soup, even if he wasn't happy about it.

Joey changed his bandages, too. Got him moving a couple times a day, but never for too long; checked the wound, usually while McDeere was asleep. Followed all Andreu's instructions to the letter, and took pictures with his phone to send her, double-checking that nothing was fucked up some way he hadn't noticed.

It was weird. But in a way it was also—it wasn't that hard, or anything.

There was a lot of shit Joey was responsible for that he didn't want to be responsible for. But he was, and there was nothing he could do about it except handle it; and when it came down to it, he took that seriously. He did the best he could, the best he had in him, because he'd never quite figured out how to do it any other way.

Hell, this was a lot simpler than the shit he usually had to deal with. The penthouse suite was quiet, warm and sunlit when it was clear and soothingly dim the one day it rained. Joey'd given strict orders about it, nobody in or out, no suspicious traffic, nothing to call anybody's attention here. Of course he still had to keep in touch with Sal, but even that didn't amount to much. Sal knew what he was doing, and now that Karpov thought McDeere was dead, he had to figure that Patrick's case was on hold, that Kurylenko was off the hook—even if it was just temporary. He'd be waiting, watching, but he had no reason to make any sudden moves, nothing Sal couldn't handle.

So all Joey really had to worry about, for the moment, was McDeere. And everything McDeere needed from Joey was easy, straightforward: a hand, an arm. Some soup. A shoulder, to the bathroom and back.

Really, when Joey thought of it that way, it was kind of a nice change of pace.

 

 

On about the fourth day, though, McDeere started looking a little less like death warmed over. He woke up for one of those thrilling trips to the bathroom, but after Joey got him back into the bed, he actually stayed awake for a while. Fumbled half-assedly with the pillows until Joey rolled his eyes and went over and propped them up for him, and even after that he didn't quite seem like he could sit still. Kept picking at the sheets and shifting, making little faces, lifting up his uninjured arm to run a hand through his hair and then grimacing.

He looked itchy, Joey thought. And then, idle at first, just a casual observation: he looked like a guy who really wanted a shower.

Needed one, probably. Not that he'd been exerting himself, exactly. But it had been four days. McDeere didn't have a shirt on; Andreu had cut the bloody one off him, and Joey had decided it was way too big a pain in the ass to try to get a new one on over that shoulder. It would only have made it harder to change McDeere's bandages, anyway. But McDeere was still wearing the same slacks—probably had dried blood all over the waistband. Hadn't changed those, hadn't washed his hair. Hadn't done more than splash some water on his face, just going back and forth from the bathroom to the bed like he'd been doing. He had the beginnings of a beard coming in, too, because Joey sure as shit hadn't been crouched over him on a California king with a razor.

It was doable, maybe. Joey would need to tape some plastic down over the bandages first—the big one, at least. Except—

Except, Joey thought slowly, there was no way in hell McDeere could stand up long enough for that.

He ignored the prickle of his skin, the sudden flush of hot tension crawling up his spine. Just glanced up from his phone like he hadn't been thinking about McDeere at all; and then paused and tilted his head a little, absent, like his heart wasn't pounding.

"If you're about to spring another leak, you better say so."

"What?" McDeere said. He sounded mostly fine, now. A little raspy around the edges, maybe. Lower-pitched than usual. Gravelly undertone. "No, I'm—" He stopped, mouth pinched, jaw tight, like he was trying to decide whether he was really about to discuss his personal hygiene with Joey Morolto. "I'm fine," he said at last. "Thanks."

"Sure," Joey said. "Want the TV on, or—"

"No," McDeere snapped, and immediately looked like he regretted it. It was a lot easier to tell when he was grimacing, now that both his eyes could open most of the way again.

He licked his stitched-up lip, and sighed a little through his nose.

"Oh, come on," Joey said.

McDeere looked at him.

"Just spit it out already. I've been _helping you piss_ ," Joey reminded him.

"Yeah," McDeere said, looking like he'd have been happier forgetting it. "I'm just—I just wish I could wash off, that's all." His mouth tilted, rueful. "Pretty sure there's still blood in my hair."

"Why, Mr. McDeere," Joey said, warm, dulcet. "Hoping for a spongebath from Nurse Morolto, is that it?"

 

 

* * *

 

 

 _Go fuck yourself_ , Mitch really carefully didn't say.

He wanted to. God, did he ever. If there was anything in the world more frustrating than Joey's habit of getting glib and snide right when Mitch was looking for a little sincerity, Mitch didn't know what it was. But—

But he was _so_ goddamn uncomfortable.

It had been inevitable. He felt so—grimy, stiff and sweaty, like if he stayed packed away much longer he was going to go stale.

And it was kind of a cruel irony that he'd finally managed to stay awake for a long enough stretch to notice exactly how disgusting he was; and by the same token, was conscious enough to be aware, in a way he hadn't been up till now, of how fucking awkward it was going to be getting clean in front of Joey.

He couldn't have cared less, before. He'd needed every ounce of attention focused squarely on hanging onto Joey's shoulders long enough for Joey to get him to the bathroom.

But with increasing consciousness came increasing _self_ -consciousness. Joey'd spent the whole morning fucking around on his phone like he didn't have a care in the world; and Mitch had spent it lying here staring at him, trying to decide how the hell he was supposed to feel about Joey having—having _touched_ him so much.

Because they hadn't, most of the time, until this. All that came to mind was the day he'd shoved Joey down to keep him from getting shot, the brief startling press of Joey's body against his. And—and at the courthouse, for the cameras, Joey gripping his hand and smiling that sweetly venomous smile.

But now they had, over and over, Joey easy and casual and clinical about it. Mitch didn't even know why it bothered him so much, but it did. He couldn't stop thinking about it; he couldn't stand it.

But he _really_ wasn't going to be able to stand spending another ten hours trapped in this damn bed.

Besides, he told himself, Joey had practically offered. Joey had practically offered, and he needed to clean himself up somehow, and—and it would just serve Joey right, if Mitch took him up on it.

It was the least he could do, considering Mitch had gotten shot and all.

"Is that included in your standard services," Mitch rasped out, "or are you going to be expecting a tip?"

"Wouldn't've guessed you'd be a cheapskate," Joey murmured, "big-shot fancy lawyer like you," and then—reached for him.

And Joey had been close to him a lot lately; he'd just gotten done thinking as much. Spooning out soup for him, easing him down into or up out of the bed. And he—he had to have been changing Mitch's bandages, too, though Mitch couldn't quite remember him doing it. He must have been waiting until Mitch was out cold for it, and maybe this was exactly why.

Because it felt different to be lying there with his eyes open, clear-headed, and Joey leaning in over him close enough that Mitch could smell his aftershave. Just to slide a towel under him, that was all. But Mitch felt so _aware_ of it, of Joey's palm at the back of his neck to steady him, of Joey's _face_.

Joey wasn't looking at him; Joey didn't seem to be giving any of this a second thought.

Then again, he must have gotten used to—to touching Mitch, if he'd been changing Mitch's bandages regularly.

So it wasn't a big deal. It didn't have to be a big deal. He'd get clean, and Joey would help him because he couldn't do it on his own with a fresh gunshot wound in his shoulder; it was the only practical way to handle it. It would be the adult thing to do, to go along with it and not make a mountain out of a molehill. And then it would be over, and they'd never talk about it again.

Mitch clung to that comforting thought, and almost as soon as he realized Joey had moved away, Joey was back again. Bowl of lukewarm water, and a washcloth from the bathroom that probably cost more than Mitch's good "court day" shoes, and then, well.

Then Joey started spongebathing him.

And abruptly the strangest thing about it wasn't just the fact that it was happening. It was—

It was how _good_ it felt.

Because it felt goddamn wonderful. After the long endless haze of days—god, he didn't even know how long he'd already been stuck here—where _everything_ hurt, he'd have been grateful just to feel medium-terrible, or even nothing at all. He'd almost forgotten anything _could_ feel good.

Mitch bit down on a noise he really didn't want to make where Joey could hear him, as Joey moved along the line of his uninjured shoulder and down his arm, into the bend of his elbow. He hadn't ever thought of the bend of his elbow as somewhere that got particularly sweaty or grimy, but god, it was a relief to feel it swiped clean.

And if Joey felt weird about doing this for Mitch, he wasn't showing it. "I'm not washing your hair," he said, "just so you know," but his tone was mostly bland, only a little snide, and he didn't stop.

He was surprisingly conscientious, thorough. Careful, even, especially over the darkest patches of bruising. Mitch was half-afraid to be jostled, jerked out of it by a sudden bolt of pain through his shoulder, except he'd forgotten: Joey had already moved him plenty, while he was out and while he wasn't, and knew the limits at least as well as he did.

So Mitch started to relax into it, and that made it feel even better. It wasn't just about the sensation, soft cloth and warm water, the cool prickling way his skin felt when it was clean. It was—it felt nice to be touched. Even if the hands were Joey's.

Something about that thought set an alarm bell ringing, way off in the distance somewhere. But Mitch hadn't quite managed to figure out why, drifting along the way he was, until he suddenly became aware that Joey was—that he'd worked his way down Mitch's chest, his waist; that he'd hooked three fingers in the waistband of the bloody slacks Mitch was still wearing. He'd already pushed the sheets aside, and he'd—he was looking at—

"Well, well, well," Joey murmured. "So I guess we _are_ feeling better today, aren't we?"

Mitch tensed, opened his eyes and jerked a hand up and caught Joey's wrist, but it was already too late: Joey just smirked at him and went right for the button anyway with his other hand, and didn't seem to care what he was bumping with the heel of his palm as he did it. The sound of the zip of Mitch's fly seemed impossibly loud, and he couldn't keep from sucking in a quick breath through his nose, face hot.

"Joey—"

"Little lonely since your wife left you, huh, Mitch?" The tone was soothing, almost pitying, and dripping with false warmth; Joey's eyes were sharp, and the twist of his mouth snide.

And for some reason it was those words, even more than the hand in Mitch's pants, that made Mitch want to snap back defensively.

But that would be stupid, he told himself. He had nothing to get defensive about. People had physical reactions; weird ones, sometimes, especially after they'd been hurt or while they were recovering. That was all.

He looked away.

Joey wasn't wrong. But that was the last thing Mitch was going to tell him. "We're separated," he said instead, as steady as he could make it. "Taking a break. She needed to—evaluate things."

He risked a glance back at Joey—who'd tilted his head, and was watching Mitch again, face blank and eyes piercing.

"Mm, I don't know," he said, with a patronizing tsk. "Sounds like the kind of thing somebody says to you when they're leaving you, but they want you to know they feel bad about it."

And he—he hadn't moved away at all, hadn't moved his hand. Mitch realized it and tried to will away the prickling wave of heat the thought sent over his skin; and then Joey did move, except it was only to pick up the washcloth again with his free hand. Mitch still had him by one wrist, Joey's hand hanging loose in his grip, fingers curled.

Mitch let go belatedly, swallowing. And all Joey did with that newfound freedom was—was skim that hand down to Mitch's hip, and slide two fingers under the band of Mitch's briefs.

"Joey," he said, and it was supposed to come out stern, a warning. It was—he'd tensed up his shoulder, a slow hot throb picking up all through his chest. That was the only reason for the breathless edge to the words.

"This is your lucky day, you know that?" Joey murmured, running the damp washcloth so low across Mitch's hips that it was—he could feel the wet through the cloth of his briefs, soaking in; and he wished fruitlessly for a damning second that the water had been ice-cold, because as it was—

As it was, he wasn't getting any less hard. The opposite, in fact.

Fuck.

Joey was moving slower now, long luxurious strokes, washcloth an increasingly thin pretext for—for whatever the fuck it was he thought he was doing, humiliating Mitch for the hell of it; maybe he was bored, maybe he'd gotten tired of waiting around for Mitch to wake up. Putting the moves on the only other person around, because he'd been stuck in this suite just as long as Mitch had—

"This is your lucky day," Joey repeated, "because no nurse I've ever seen does this kind of thing outside of pornos," and then he _grabbed Mitch's dick_. Just like that. Because Joey had never met an impulse so reckless or destructive he wouldn't indulge it. He'd shot Mitch's goddamn bar certificate because he was pissed off; Mitch should have known he couldn't be counted on to make the reasonable choice in a situation like this.

And then Mitch wasn't thinking at all, could only tip his head back against the pillow and gasp for air, eyes screwed shut. Because Joey had tightened his hand, squeezing Mitch straight through the wet fabric of his briefs. Fuck, fuck, it was like—it was like the inverse of getting shot, the lingering agony still shooting through Mitch's shoulder: the intensity of the sensation, scratch of cloth against the head of Mitch's dick, almost too much.

God. He needed to shove Joey's hand away, he thought. He needed to ask Joey what the fuck he thought he was doing, he needed to move away—but his hips, his cock, weren't listening to him, and he felt himself roll into Joey's grip instead, pressing up helplessly, trying not to move his shoulder at all.

"Always willing to help out a guy in a tight spot," Joey was saying, low, smug with innuendo; and he squeezed even harder for a fraction of a second on the word _tight_ , and then let go. He caught at the waistband of Mitch's open slacks, tugged them down around his thighs. Mitch felt a brief clearheaded flash of trepidation—he shouldn't be letting Joey do this, expose him like this; he needed to stop this _right now_.

Except when he tried to lurch up on one elbow, get his hand down there to tug the pants back up and never mind how bloody they were or weren't, it tightened the whole yoke of his shoulders. The pain was blinding, excruciating, and he fell back breathlessly with Joey's hand bracing his side.

"Ah-ah-ah," Joey said, even his solicitousness coming with an edge of mockery in it. "Now, now, Mitch, mustn't strain yourself."

"Joey," Mitch said, and hated how weak it sounded—breathless, pleading. God, he needed to make Joey let go of him. Once Joey's hands were off him, once Joey wasn't touching him anymore, this would seem crazy and impossible and stupid, like it was supposed to. It would seem crazy and impossible and stupid, and Mitch wouldn't _want_ it so much then—

"Relax, will you?" Joey said, admonishing.

And then he pinned Mitch down, forearm across Mitch's tense twisting hips, and shoved his other hand into Mitch's briefs, and it was all Mitch could do to catch his breath.

Jesus, Joey was good at this. Mitch hadn't expected any of this, but especially not that: especially not that he'd _like_ it, that Joey's hand on him would light him up so hot so fast.

That bolt of pain through his shoulder had taken away a little of the urgency for a minute, but fifteen seconds of Joey's clever fingers on his dick and it was like it had never happened; he was as hard as ever, harder, already slick and leaking. And it was like the spongebathing itself, multiplied—it probably wasn't ten times better than any handjob Mitch had ever gotten, but it _felt_ like it was right now just because it wasn't pain. He'd gotten used to it, slipping in and out of consciousness, bleary, blurry, the throb and the ache never quite gone no matter how far he went. The pleasure of it wasn't just pleasure but _relief_ , and even with his chest heaving like this, the scream of his shoulder felt increasingly meaningless, insignificant.

And Joey _was_ good at this. Mitch wasn't at a hundred percent, obviously, and Joey was holding him down without any particularly obvious effort; the muscles of his bared forearm were tense, crisp white sleeve of his dress shirt rolled up to his elbow, but that was all. Mitch couldn't move even when he wanted to, couldn't thrust up into the circle of Joey's fingers, couldn't chase after it. He just had to—to lie there, to _let_ Joey jerk him off, and he didn't know why that thought was so fucking incandescent to think, but it was.

He squeezed his eyes shut, dug his teeth into his lip, and then he just—he had to look. Joey's hand on his cock was all the more obscene for how unexpected it was, how ten minutes ago Joey had just been—

Well. Joey had just been running a wet washcloth all over him, his throat, his chest, his arms. So maybe Mitch should have been able to see this coming.

But it didn't feel like it. All the things he'd ever imagined Joey might do to him, if he were caught by Karpov's goons and shot, and _this_ had never been one of them.

And that Joey had tugged his slacks down just far enough to get them out of the way and no further, had yanked the waist of Mitch's briefs down and then just ignored it—like he was impatient, like he couldn't wait. Like once he'd realized Mitch had gotten hard, he'd _wanted_ to—

Mitch bit his lip harder and then had to wince, stitches caught; Joey laughed a little, a soft huff through his nose, and that was when Mitch realized Joey wasn't looking at Mitch's cock, at his own hand working, but at Mitch's face. Which shouldn't have been a surprise either, not really: sometimes Mitch felt like Joey was _always_ fucking looking at him, sharp eyes trained on him. Catching everything, even the things Mitch didn't want him to see.

Joey saw him looking back, and smiled at him, triumphant little twist at the corner of his mouth. "You want it that bad, huh?" he said, almost soft. "Want it so bad you'll even let me give it to you."

Jesus. Jesus Christ, Mitch thought, and screwed his eyes shut, twisted his face away to press his hot cheek against the pillow, but it was—it was stupid, pointless; there was nowhere he could hide from Joey right now.

"Didn't know you'd be so desperate," Joey continued, tone marveling. "Gee, Mitch, why didn't you say something? Could've stroked you off a long time ago. Wouldn't have minded you owing me a favor. In your office, in the courthouse, in the car—I know, I know, you'd want it behind a closed door; you've never liked anybody seeing you with my hands on you, have you?"

And there was something quietly vicious about the question, but Mitch couldn't pick it out over the rush of blood in his ears, the pound of his heart. He'd flashed helplessly back to that day in the courthouse: Joey gripping his hand, making him shake in front of the cameras. And if Joey hadn't stopped there, hadn't been satisfied with that—had led him away and shoved him into a room somewhere and made him put up with a lot more than a handshake—

He trembled and shook, pressing up into the steady restraint of Joey's arm. And even Joey's crude contempt, the awareness of Joey's eyes on him, couldn't stop whatever Joey was doing with his thumb, the smooth twist of his wrist and rub of his broad palm, from feeling unbelievably fucking good. It was too much, it was just enough; it filled Mitch up and overflowed, spilled over, too hot and bright to hold.

He lay there afterward, and he was—he should have said something, probably, but he had no idea what and he needed to catch his breath anyway. He felt wrecked and exhausted, a little cold, skin starting to prickle up in goosebumps everywhere Joey had wet him down now that the water had had a chance to evaporate away. He didn't want to deal with this. He didn't want to have to look Joey in the face.

But Joey didn't say anything either. After a moment, Mitch heard a trickle of drops splashing, water squeezed out; and then Joey's hand moved off his cock, but only so Joey could—could finish wiping him down, that was all.

Mitch didn't move. Joey eased his slacks the rest of the way off his legs, cleaned him up and tugged his briefs casually back into place. Folded that damn washcloth over, fresh unused side out against the sides of Mitch's bare thighs, the backs of his knees, and Mitch fell asleep just like that: with Joey's hands on him, still waiting for something to start hurting.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Joey didn't wash McDeere's hair.

He'd said he wouldn't, and he didn't. But as long as McDeere was out again—he managed to tuck a towel under McDeere's lolling head, and he combed a little water through it. McDeere had been right, there had still been some blood caught in it; dry, now, dark and clotted up. Might as well get it out before it could stain the pillowcase all over again. Joey had already had to dispose of a few too many bloody bed linens, thanks all the same.

It took longer than it should have. No reason for it, he just—he just kept catching himself staring at McDeere. His lax face, his slack mouth. His fucking eyelashes, dull gold fan of them against the little lines around the corners of his eyes, over the ugly mottling of healing bruises.

He was just surprised, that was all. Surprised McDeere had gone for it, or at least had let Joey go for it. Dull heat that still hadn't faded, all through his gut, his chest, at the satisfaction of it—because it had been _McDeere_ , steadfast moralizing spotless McDeere, letting _Joey_ give him a handjob. Letting him; wanting him to, even, at least once he'd gotten started.

Nice to think McDeere was just as easy to lead around by his dick as anybody. Always acting like he was better than everybody else, up there on his high horse; but when the chips were down, he could be convinced to want things he shouldn't. He could be weak for it—Joey could _make_ him weak for it. Given enough of a push, even the mighty Mitch McDeere made some fucking mistakes.

It wasn't that McDeere was perfect. He got in trouble often enough. It was just—it was just somehow it never quite seemed to be his fault, or at least he never thought it was. Other people did things wrong, and McDeere got in their way. Got in their way, faced them down, and did whatever it was he and his precious legal ethics courses had decided was _right_ instead, even when it got him beaten to a pulp and shot in the shoulder.

And Joey was going to make him sorry for it, sooner or later; Joey would teach him to regret it. But it would be Joey and nobody else, and in the meantime it was _Karpov_ who was going to fucking regret having laid a hand on him—

Joey realized dimly that he'd clenched up his fist around the wet comb, and forced himself to relax until his knuckles weren't so white. McDeere was fine. Or he wasn't yet, but he would be. And in the meantime, looking after him was almost getting one over on him in and of itself: making him depend on Joey, rely on Joey; making him accept Joey's help over and over again, even when that had to be the last thing he wanted.

Especially when the help involved an impromptu spongebath with a happy ending. Joey snorted. Once McDeere woke up again, remembered what had happened—he was going to resent the hell out of that.

What would annoy him the most? Probably if Joey treated it like it wasn't a big deal. Which would be easy, because it hadn't been. It had happened, it was over, and Joey was going to savor the memory every time McDeere made a big show out of taking the high road, or balked at whatever it was Joey needed him to do next if they were going to get Patrick off the hook at last.

It hadn't been a big deal, and it wasn't going to be a problem.

And if Joey went to put away the bowl, the washcloth, and maybe ended up shutting himself in the bathroom and jerking off furiously over the memory of McDeere's hot heavy dick in his hand, McDeere's wet mouth red where McDeere had bitten into it, the trembling muscles cutting across McDeere's hips pinned under his arm—well, that was nobody's business but his.

 

 

It was even easier to handle than Joey had expected.

Once he left the bathroom, he stepped out into the main suite to make some calls, eat, get himself a drink; take a breath, in a space that hadn't been so thoroughly taken up by McDeere that there wasn't any air left in it anymore.

All the news Sal had for him was cautiously optimistic. Karpov wasn't rushing things, hadn't come after them—licking his wounds, maybe, after Joey had busted right into the heart of his operation to steal McDeere out from under his nose. If he had any clue McDeere was still alive, he wasn't acting on it yet.

It was good to know they were probably safe for the rest of the day. Easier to relax. By the time Joey heard a sound from the bedroom, McDeere shifting around in there, he felt good, steady, in control. And it was easy to go over and rap a knuckle against the doorframe, easy to meet McDeere's eyes and raise an eyebrow and say, "I got a real exciting dinner menu for you, if you think you're up for it. You got your choice of soup, soup, or soup."

And McDeere, astoundingly, actually followed his goddamned lead. He gave Joey a sour little moue of those stitched-up lips, and said, "Gee, I don't know, I'm really feeling like soup. Any of that available, or do I have to settle for soup?"

Not a word about before. About Joey's hands on him, his cock, Joey rubbing him off right there in the bed. Not even about his hair, if he'd noticed it was a little cleaner than it had been.

Almost disorienting, to think McDeere might actually be willing to just let it fucking go. Or—maybe he was hoping _Joey_ would. Maybe he regretted it, hated it, wished he'd never done it; maybe he was hoping that if he kept his mouth shut, Joey wouldn't bring it up either, would forget all about it.

As if.

But he went out, came back with McDeere's damn soup—and McDeere actually could sit up far enough today, awake and aware, to hold the bowl against his chest and eat it by himself.

Which meant Joey should have left. He didn't need to be there. But he didn't, unthinking habit getting the better of him; he didn't even think about it at all until he realized he was staring. It was just—

It was just McDeere sitting there, his bare chest. Turning a whole rainbow of colors, now, not just the deep black and fresh blue it had been at first, but there was no real reason Joey's eyes should have caught on it. It had been a hell of a show from the start. But something felt different anyway, looking at it today after—after having his hands all over it.

He couldn't remember McDeere flinching, during all that. The thought bothered him, prickling uneasily under his skin. He shouldn't have been so careful. The last thing he needed was McDeere getting it in his head that Joey wasn't dangerous; that just because Joey hadn't let Karpov whack him, he didn't have anything to worry about.

And then he glanced up, and realized McDeere was watching him. Still eating, not moving—hadn't burned himself, wasn't trying to get up on his own or anything else stupid. He was sitting there, propped up against the pillows, sucking down his soup—minestrone, tonight—and watching Joey steadily out of those bright bruised eyes.

Maybe it was just because he was finally awake enough to, clearheaded. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with Joey holding him down and jerking him off at all.

Yeah. Right.

Joey did what he did every time he wanted to tense up and start fidgeting like a dope, which was to say he relaxed conspicuously back in his chair, spread his thighs wide and draped an arm over the back of it, like he'd never been so comfortable or at ease in his whole life. He let McDeere watch him, and he very carefully didn't give a single fuck about it.

McDeere kept staring at him like that the whole time he ate. When he was done, he didn't try to hand the bowl and spoon to Joey; he just leaned over a little, real carefully, and set them down on the bedside table. And when he did open his mouth again, it wasn't to say any of the shit Joey had been waiting for.

"What are you doing here?"

Joey raised an eyebrow at him. "You starting to have problems with your memory, Mitch? Wouldn't surprise me, you got beaned pretty good—"

"I mean _you_ ," Mitch said. "I was in bad shape; I needed help. But it didn't have to be you. My shoulder, the stitches—you had a doctor look at me, didn't you? Where are they?"

"Relax, Mitch," Joey said. "I've been keeping her updated," but McDeere was already shaking his head, like Joey'd still missed his point.

"Come on, there's got to be somebody else you could—"

"Uh, did you miss the part where we're trying to make it _hard_ to find you?" Joey scoffed. "Having some hired nurse coming in and out of here on the regular wouldn't exactly help keep us under the radar."

"Right," McDeere said. "Obviously the subtler option is for Joey Morolto to vanish for—what did you say it would be, until I can move around on my own? A week? Two?"

"So I'm spooked," Joey offered lazily, shrugging a shoulder. "So it freaked me out, how close I think Karpov got to breaking you before I made it in there and shut your mouth permanently—or maybe I'm worried you lied, maybe I think he knows something he doesn't, and I'm waiting to see what his next move is going to be. By the looks of things so far," Joey added, "he's spooked too; didn't think I'd be able to pull off a maneuver like that, steal something as valuable as you right out of his hands before he'd even gotten anything out of you. It's not going to be a problem."

"Sure," McDeere said. "And if by some chance they figure out what actually happened and they find this place, find me—they'll have you, too. If Karpov can take both of us out in one go, that's a problem, Nurse Morolto," and his tone went briefly sardonic. "If he comes after me again, wouldn't it be better if you were on the other side of DC, instead of right next to me?"

Joey looked at him incredulously, and shook his head. "Mitch, Mitch, Mitch," he said, mild, chiding; his best disappointed Morolto boss impression, exaggerated enough that even McDeere wouldn't miss it. "How many times do I got to explain this, huh? You work for me. Patrick's going to be my consigliere; you're looking after him for me, and my guys are looking after you." Joey paused to sniff. "Or at least they were, until you fucked off into the tender care of the US Marshals. Coming after you _is_ coming after me. Would be whether I was right here two feet away from you or not—same difference. And it's about time Karpov fucking figured that out."

McDeere stared at him. Didn't have the same kind of impact as usual; or it shouldn't have, anyway, when his eyes were still a little swollen, his face all mottled, stitches only standing out starker and blacker now that his bruises had finally started lightening up a bit. Still so fucking blue, though.

Joey hated that about McDeere. Those blue fucking eyes.

"Joey," McDeere said, and then stopped—thought better of whatever he'd been about to say, for once, or maybe realized he didn't know what to say at all, and reached over for the abandoned soup bowl instead, held it out with his good arm. "You handle kitchen service, too, Nurse Morolto?"

"You bet your ass I do," Joey told him sweetly, and took it; and if he was grateful for the excuse to leave the room, to go somewhere McDeere couldn't _look_ at him like that for a minute, well, there was no way McDeere was going to know it.

 

 

Anyway, the point was, it wasn't a big deal. McDeere didn't pitch a fit about it, didn't even bring it up. It was fine.

Everything was fine. They passed another day hardly talking at all—McDeere was finally awake enough that he actually did want the TV on, needed something to pay attention to that wasn't any effort for him; he couldn't hold a book open easily with his shoulder fucked up, and the type made him squint and frown like he had a headache, but he could shut his eyes and just listen to the news, and he was fine like that. Probably the partial concussion, Joey figured. Andreu had mentioned something like that.

He still needed Joey's help getting out of the bed, and back into it again. The way he had to move his torso, to bend and shift and hold his own weight, was too much to ask. But he could walk to the bathroom pretty much under his own steam, now, and back. Even managed to stay standing long enough to change his clothes, fresh pair of briefs and a new set of slacks, though he had to lie still for a while after with an arm curled around his ribs, breathing really carefully.

He hadn't been able to fasten them himself. Joey hadn't made him ask, had reached right over and tugged the waistband up into place—had zipped McDeere's fly and only just let his knuckles brush McDeere's soft dick on the way up. McDeere had glared at him a little, and then a lot when Joey'd given him a wide-eyed innocent look in response; but his ears had gone pink, too.

That part had been kind of fun.

But overall, it was fine. Like it never happened at all. They'd managed to find some kind of an even keel, which was nothing short of a miracle, considering it was him and McDeere—would've been stupid to regret it, and Joey refused to be stupid.

And that lasted right up until McDeere decided that he actually did need a real shower.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The words seemed to hang in the air for a minute after Mitch said them.

But they were true, and he refused to take them back. He wanted to be able to clean himself, _really_ clean himself, and it was about time he actually did wash his hair. And it was—it wasn't worth the time it would take for Joey to—to sponge him off again. It would be a ridiculous inconvenience, when Mitch could just shower instead.

That was all, Mitch told himself, and firmly ignored the funny speculative way Joey was looking at him, the weird stuttered leap of his own heart in his chest.

It— _it_ —wasn't going to happen again. And if he had, hypothetically, been concerned than it might, then that would only have been more reason to give this a shot; to make it clear that his condition had improved, that he could handle this himself. To make a point out of it, so Joey would know he wasn't going to have to—touch Mitch like that again.

Except Joey did have to touch him. To tape down plastic over the bandage around his shoulder, first. Mitch waited it out silently, skin hot, and didn't look at Joey. And then Joey had to do it again to help Mitch up, because he still couldn't lever himself up out of the bed without straining the wound so hard he got dizzy.

Joey's hand on his bare side felt like a fucking brand.

But Mitch could get to the bathroom on his own. He turned around to close the door, and Joey was still standing by the bed, watching him, pale eyes glittering—there was a long strange stretched-out moment where they were just staring at each other like that, before Mitch got a goddamn grip and closed the bathroom door.

Mitch could strip down the rest of the way on his own. Funny kind of victory, he thought to himself wryly, to be able to take his own pants off.

He didn't think about the sensation of undoing his fly, and he didn't compare it to—to anything.

Except he still had to get into the bathtub.

He eyed it, and let himself curse a little under his breath. It was huge, and the shower head over it was gleaming and unnecessarily complicated and probably had water pressure to die for. But it was still a bathtub.

"You couldn't spring for a penthouse suite with a walk-in, Morolto?" he said to the wall. " _Really_?"

But it was—it would be stupid to take the risk. Wouldn't it? It would be stupid to reinjure himself falling down or something, just because he was too stubborn to ask for help like a fucking adult.

It wasn't going to happen again. He didn't have anything to worry about.

He told himself that once, twice, and then squeezed his eyes shut, tipped his head forward against the inside of the bathroom door and just breathed, heart pounding in his ears.

And then he turned the knob and opened the door, and said, as level as he could make it, "Your services are required, Nurse Morolto."

Joey snorted, and then sidled in with an eyebrow raised, that sharp sardonic look he did so well. "Yeah? Don't want to fall and break your hip, old man?"

Mitch gave him a flat narrow-eyed stare, which didn't seem to dent him at all; Joey just smiled, quick slant at one side of his mouth, and stepped forward to catch Mitch's elbow in one hand.

And then he raised the other eyebrow, too, and said, "Aren't you forgetting something?"

Mitch didn't look down. He kept his eyes on Joey's, hooked a thumb in the waist of his briefs and skimmed them down—winced a little, when he had to bend and the motion twisted his bad shoulder, but he got them down far enough that they slid the rest of the way to his feet and he could step out of them.

Joey didn't look down either. He watched Mitch right back, silent, blisteringly intent.

Fuck, Mitch thought dimly.

"I don't know, Mitch," Joey murmured, and he'd—he was moving his thumb against the inside of Mitch's forearm, the inner bend of his elbow. "Doesn't look like you got much of a range of motion to speak of, with that arm. You fuck up that plastic, and I'll have to haul you right back out of there." He tilted his head, and there was something hot and speculative in the look on his face that was—Mitch didn't like it.

Mitch didn't like it at all. That was why his skin was prickling.

"You sure you don't want somebody around to wash your back?"

And Joey's tone was glib, but the heat in his eyes hadn't eased.

Mitch had no idea how long they stayed like that, staring at each other, silence pulled taut between them like a wire. He should have said something, told Joey to fuck off; he should have moved, tugged his arm out of Joey's grip and gotten in the goddamn shower.

But he didn't.

Joey was right. He wasn't going to be able to reach his back on his own. But—

But, maybe, that wasn't why.

He didn't move, and he didn't say a word. And finally Joey let go of him, and reached up toward his own throat without looking away, fingers catching on the top button just under the open collar of his dress shirt.

"Not ruining my favorite shirt for this," he said, wry, very low.

Mitch swallowed and looked away. It didn't help that much: he could still hear the rustle of Joey shucking the shirt off. And then—and then Joey skimmed a hand along his arm again, gripped his elbow steadily, and Mitch looked down at his feet, watched himself lift one and set it safely inside the massive tub, and then the other.

And then Joey let him go again. He turned to flip the water on, his back to Joey, and closed his eyes. And then he stood there, shivering with heat, steaming water pouring over him, waiting for Joey to touch him again.

It didn't take long.

 

 

Joey actually did help wash him off.

Mitch hadn't been sure what to expect, but he was fine. Considerate, even. Mitch could only reach up with one hand, couldn't scrub the hotel shampoo through his hair properly; so Joey did it for him. He was brisk about it, businesslike, tipping Mitch's head back into his hands and working through Mitch's hair with quick zigzag strokes.

But then it got—it was different, after that. He made a tsking sound and turned Mitch a little to wash it out, and Mitch closed his eyes and tilted his face into the water, and Joey's fingers slowed in his hair, and suddenly Mitch's heart had started pounding again, for no good reason at all.

The strokes of Joey's hand got longer, lazier. They started trailing down the nape of Mitch's neck, along the blade of his uninjured shoulder; his back, his waist. His hip—

"Joey," he heard himself say, almost voiceless, dragged out of him on a helpless exhale.

"Mm?" and Joey skimmed the backs of his fingers lower still, smoothed them along the side of Mitch's ass like he just wanted to assess the curve—like he wasn't planning anything, no, sir.

Yeah, right.

Mitch squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a breath; and he didn't even remember deciding to move, but he'd—he was bracing himself against the wall of the shower, now, on his good forearm.

"What's the matter, Mitch?" Joey murmured in his ear, soft and smug, goading. "Not sure how clean you want to get?" and he was—it was just a fingertip, the side of his hand, sliding down along the crack of Mitch's ass. He hadn't done anything, not really. Mitch could have reached back, knocked his hand away, told him to cut it out.

Instead he stood there. Stood there and shook, and didn't say a word, and when Joey nudged a bare wet knee between his dripping thighs, he let them be pushed apart.

He didn't know what he was expecting. His head was suddenly full of wild pictures, Joey pinning him to the wall and fucking him, shoving him down into the tub—that'd fuck up his shoulder for sure, he thought dimly. He'd probably have been better off taking a chance on climbing into the shower on his own.

But Joey didn't do it. He just—he just kept touching Mitch, slow, purposeful. He did push Mitch forward a little, against the arm he'd braced on the wall, but it was just to send a sheet of steaming water sluicing down Mitch's back; the sensations were all mixed up for a second, Joey's fingers against him and the water streaming down his ass, almost too hot to stand.

At the first real press of Joey's fingertip, Mitch had to bite down on a noise just from sheer impatience. He almost wished Joey would just _do_ it, shove three fingers in at once and take him apart, but it was—Joey kept teasing him instead: rubbing with his thumb around the rim; sliding in a finger, two, just up to the first knuckle, bending a bit, easing them back out again. Mitch could feel his face getting hot, his throat flushing. Just because it felt so _obscene_ , to be standing here letting Joey toy with him like this.

Letting him—wanting him to.

Because Mitch did want it, god help him. He was hard. It took longer to get there like this, hole in his shoulder, and way too tired considering he hadn't done anything in days but lie around listening to the TV; but he'd felt that heat, that ripening heaviness, picking up the second Joey had started unbuttoning his shirt, and now he was so hard he was a little dizzy with it.

He bit his lip. God, what was he doing? How had he ended up here, getting fingered in a gigantic penthouse shower by Joey Morolto, thinking to himself his biggest problem was that he couldn't touch his dick?

But he couldn't. He needed his good arm to brace himself, to keep the gradually-harder thrusts of Joey's fingers inside him from knocking him into the wall. And it was the sad, sinful, excruciating truth that he couldn't jerk himself off with his bad arm; even that motion, the rise and fall of his hand, would set his shoulder on fire.

"God, Joey," he said to the wall, sharp, like it was a curse. " _God_ ," and that was—was that three fingers, finally? Jesus, he thought, jesus, fuck; and he spread his shaking thighs wider, fruitless, trying to get Joey to—to _fuck_ him already, even if it was just with his hand—

"Pushy," Joey murmured against his shoulder, and it was impossible to tell from his tone whether he meant it as a chastisement or a compliment. He was gripping Mitch's hip, stroking it absently with his thumb as he worked the fingers of his other hand deeper still; and there was something about that thought, about Joey _in_ him like that, and Mitch just standing here taking it, that was almost as hot as Joey's hands on him.

And then Joey shifted that hand on Mitch's hip, and Mitch didn't even realize what he was doing until Joey's knuckles brushed the side of his dick.

"Oh, I see—getting a little desperate, are we?"

Mitch had a sharp response for that; he really did. But it fell out of his head at the feeling of Joey thumbing idly along the shaft of his cock, testing, assessing—circling him and _squeezing_ , fuck, that was too much, and the next time Joey thrust in with his fingers, Mitch could push up against the wet width of Joey's palm.

God. It was so good he could have fucking sobbed. How the hell was it allowed to be this good with _Joey_ —

And then something brushed the back of his thigh; and Joey drew in a tense, quiet little breath against the curve of Mitch's shoulder, hardly even audible over the patter of the shower.

Obviously there was a reason Joey was doing this. Mitch had figured that much out already. He just hadn't been able to guess what that reason might be. There were so many options, even before factoring in the part where it was Joey, who was incomprehensible at the best of times. He wasn't going to kill Mitch, he'd made that clear plenty of times; but he still hated Mitch for what had happened to his father, for Mitch's part in it. Forcing Mitch to help him get Patrick off the hook was worth something to him—but maybe not enough. He still wanted to feel like he'd gotten one over on Mitch. Wanted to demonstrate that he was in control, that Mitch answered to him. And if he could do it and humiliate Mitch in the bargain, not just get what he wanted but have Mitch _beg_ him for it—

It was easy to think he'd be in favor.

But maybe that wasn't all it was.

Mitch straightened his arm part of the way, pushed away from the shower wall enough to turn. Blinked the water out of his eyes and glanced down, and jesus, he'd been right.

Joey was hard, too.

It had been doing it for Mitch plenty already, the sheer shameful obscenity of Joey playing with him like this, getting him off. But it was—it felt different, sudden weight in the air, breath caught in his chest, thinking Joey had been getting off on it too.

"Joey," he said, and then had to bite his lip and jerk at a particularly vicious twist of Joey's fingers inside him.

But he wasn't going to let Joey put him off, and he wasn't going to let Joey distract him. God. Had Joey been hard last time, too? Had holding Mitch down on that bed, jerking him off, gotten him going? Mitch couldn't remember, couldn't picture Joey then clearly enough to guess.

He couldn't jerk himself with his injured arm. But he could use it to reach back a little, the stretch sharp and twinging but not more than he could stand. He reached back and he caught Joey's waist, his bare wet hip, and tugged.

"Come on," he said, low. "Come on."

Joey didn't move for a second, taut with resistance; and then he did, giving in just as thoroughly, and suddenly the whole straining length of his hard cock was pressed against the side of Mitch's ass.

Mitch stopped being able to think so hard, after that. It was too much, all of it, the sensation and—and Joey. Joey, who was always too goddamn much, overwhelming, uncontainable.

But through the endless mounting blur of pleasure, the heat and the wet, Joey's fingers around him and inside him, the thing that stuck when it was over was the weird relief of it. The reassurance, almost, that Joey was as caught up in whatever the hell they were doing here as Mitch was; that Mitch wasn't alone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Joey was off his game.

It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't anything he couldn't handle. It was just—

It was just that things had gotten away from him a little. He hadn't thought McDeere would go for it in the first place. And then McDeere had, and Joey had figured all right, it was a one-off, so what. And then—and then McDeere had gone for it again.

Had gone for it again, and Joey had been seized by an overpowering urge to push him, to see exactly how far he was planning to let Joey go. He'd figured he had one shot, maybe, to get a decent handful of McDeere's ass, and then McDeere would come to his senses, shove Joey off him and demand to know what the fuck Joey thought he was doing. Because it was one thing to let a guy jerk you off and it was another to let him shove his fingers up your ass, and in Joey's experience men like McDeere discovered they had a real hard line in between that they weren't too interested in crossing.

But wherever McDeere's line was, apparently that wasn't it. And McDeere _was_ hard up, after all; had been for a while, judging by the way he'd talked about his wife. _Evaluate things_ —that was code for _see other people_ if Joey'd ever heard it. She must have met somebody down there in Kentucky she liked the look of.

But of course McDeere was too stubborn to have done the same. And there was no reason Joey shouldn't take advantage of the opportunity to have some fun.

The shower had been too good a shot to pass up. Almost too good to believe. Joey had had a half-hysterical second where he'd thought McDeere had been angling for it on purpose—setting Joey up, laying a trap, so he could wait for Joey to go for it and then make it real clear he didn't want Joey touching him again.

And Joey might have kept thinking it, except for the way McDeere had looked at him in the bathroom: blue eyes wide, mouth soft, throat working. Like he'd been surprised, too. Like somehow he'd thought he was going to stand there naked and ask Joey to help him into the shower, and Joey'd do it and then step back out and dry off, and then go call Sal or have a sandwich or something.

Christ.

But none of that stuff had really been a problem. So it had turned out McDeere was willing to let Joey finger him for a while. Fine. And Joey had already given McDeere a handjob; that part had been old news.

It had been something else. Something about the way McDeere had twisted around in the water, dripping, with Joey's fingers in his ass, and looked at Joey. Looked at Joey's dick, too. And Joey'd had half a dozen things ready to spit at him like nails if he said anything about it—what, had he thought Joey was getting McDeere off out of the goodness of his heart? Like Joey would go to the trouble unless he were getting something out of it, too. Please.

But McDeere hadn't said anything. Or at least not anything like that. He'd touched Joey, that was all. Touched him, pulled him in, until he'd cracked and started rutting himself furiously against the side of McDeere's ass, the crease of his wet thigh.

In the moment, he couldn't have borne doing anything else. With McDeere naked in front of him, dripping wet, red flush blooming across his cheeks, his heaving chest, his throat—because of what Joey was doing to him, because of what he was letting Joey do—Jesus Christ. Joey wasn't made of stone.

But once they were done, once he'd stepped out of that goddamn shower and snagged himself a towel, he'd—he hadn't been able to stay in there anymore. He hadn't been able to stay in that room with McDeere.

If anybody'd gotten fucked in there, it was McDeere. They'd both been naked. But for some reason it was Joey who seemed to have come out of there feeling stripped bare, flipped like a turtle, shell pried up, some raw softness he hadn't even known he had somehow exposed.

He hated it. Lounged around the suite all evening with nothing but the towel, grinning sharply at McDeere every time he flushed and telling him he'd seen it all before; but even that didn't help.

McDeere got sick of it after about an hour. Joey could see it happening, tension winding McDeere's jaw up tight, and in a weird way, somewhere kind of cool and far off from himself, he was relieved. McDeere was going to get pissed, and Joey was going to get pissed right back at him—god, he was ready for it. He was almost jittering with anticipation, skin itching with it, lip curling.

"All right," McDeere said at last. "You going to get this out of your system anytime soon?"

"Can't imagine what you mean by that, Mitch," Joey said, leaning back in his chair, one arm tucked behind his head as he thumbed idly through photos on his phone; like he had no idea the towel was sliding, about to flash McDeere a nice risqué stretch of his thigh.

Because it didn't matter what had happened, and it didn't matter that McDeere was seeing him like this, and McDeere needed to know that.

McDeere was frowning at him when he glanced up, little wrinkle between the brows, mouth downturned—and then the phone buzzed in his hand.

Joey looked at the screen. Sal. Fantastic.

"Sorry," he said, and shot McDeere a real sweet smile. "I really ought to get this."

 

 

It shouldn't have been such a relief to get out of the master bedroom, leave McDeere in there and close the door behind him.

But it was, and Joey hated that, too.

He threw himself down on the sofa, hitching the towel absently back into place, and answered the phone.

"What is it, Sal?"

Sal hesitated. That couldn't be good.

"Everything okay there, boss?"

"Everything's fine," Joey said, in a slow deliberate tone, so Sal would know the deflection wasn't doing shit to distract him—that he knew something was up, and that Sal had better tell him.

"Right, okay," Sal said, and then hesitated again, blew out a breath over the line; Joey heard a noise somewhere on Sal's end, soft click like a door closing, or like Sal was making sure it was locked. "Look, boss, I've got your back. You know that."

"Spit it out," Joey snapped.

"Well—it's just this thing with the Russians, and that gun you had me bring over with the other stuff from Karpov's place. You know what that was, I know what that was. If the FBI's really involved in this, that's a lot of heat."

"You think I don't know that?" Joey demanded. "You think I'm not exceptionally well-aware that there's a potential problem here we are going to need to deal with?"

"No, boss," Sal said, quick, wary.

Joey closed his eyes, and rubbed at his forehead, and made himself take a breath. Sal was concerned. On some level, it was Sal's job to be concerned. To be on the lookout for shit that might cause them problems, before the problems happened.

And Joey needed him to keep doing it, which meant maybe not biting his head off when he did.

Joey didn't apologize. He was the boss; the boss didn't apologize.

But he took another breath, let it out, and then cleared his throat, and said, "Look, Sal, I understand. All right? We're going to handle it. But as long as Karpov hasn't made a move, we've got time. The best chance we've got to unravel all this, without it looking like it was us, is this Kurylenko angle—getting somebody to pay attention to this murder, that it was him and not Patrick. And for that, we need McDeere.

"The more effort the FBI's got to put into keeping Kurylenko on the street, the tighter they tie themselves to Karpov, and the more dirt we're going to get on them and what they've been doing. Convincing them this deal they've got where they clean up after Kurylenko is more trouble than it's worth is the only way we get out of this. Okay?"

"Right," Sal said. "Okay. All right, boss."

"All right," Joey agreed. "Keep me up to date."

He hung up after. And then he let the phone drop to the cushions, and tipped his head back against the sofa.

Five minutes, and all the itchy wired-up frustration that had been humming through him had drained away just like that. Maybe he should've called Sal earlier.

He snorted, and scrubbed a hand over his face. Christ, it was just—it was exhausting, that was all. He'd known for years he was going to have to be this guy, and he'd been ready for it; as ready as he could be, anyway. But it was always so much fucking work. He was sick of it already—he'd been sick of it since the day he'd started. And it was never going to end.

Not until he died, anyway. With any luck somebody would whack him before he cracked forty, and give him a break.

He laughed a little, blackly amused. And then he leaned forward and set his elbows on his bare knees, and stared at his hands.

He'd been giving himself a break already. Giving himself a reason to get away from it all, shutting himself up in here with Mitch McDeere and a gold-star rationale for it that nobody could argue with. Letting himself do what he wanted, like he was allowed.

But sooner or later, it was going to have to end.

And he wasn't going to make an idiot out of himself pretending otherwise.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Joey didn't come back in.

It shouldn't have bothered Mitch as much as it did. So he could get some rest without Joey making a spectacle of himself—like that was a bad thing.

But he lay there, in the absurdly huge bed with its absurdly nice sheets, and it felt like it took a long, long time for him to fall asleep.

When he woke up in the morning, the door was still closed. He decided that was as good an excuse as any to give it a shot, and managed to tip himself over onto his good side and push himself up out of the bed on his own. Barely made his shoulder throb at all.

He felt stronger, steadier. There were drawers in here, a bureau, and he went through them and found some clean underwear, pants—Joey must've had somebody deliver some in his size, those first few days he'd been out of it, because they fit fine.

Bending over all the way was still a bit too much of a challenge; his ribs ached when he tried it, breath coming short. So he sat down to put them on instead, one leg at a time.

Funny, how functional being able to dress himself made him feel. Even if he still couldn't manage to get a shirt on—he tried, for a fruitless and painful thirty seconds, but moving his shoulder the way he needed to before he could get both his arms in the sleeves left him gasping through a red-hot jolt every time.

He waited there for a minute, just catching his breath, letting the worst of the ache fade a little. And he thought about going out there, but—

But, for some reason, he couldn't shake a hunch that it would be a bad idea. That he'd be better off if he gave Joey some kind of warning.

He rubbed his face absently with his good hand. He could probably manage a shave today, too. His head was the clearest it had been in days; but all that did was make the memories feel that much less real. Had he really—had Joey really—? God. He still didn't know what to make of any of it, what Joey had been thinking; what _he'd_ been thinking, for that matter. Except—

Except that Joey had come for him when he hadn't thought anybody would. Joey had come for him, had saved his life, and now that fact felt all tangled up with—with the way Joey had looked at him in the bathroom, or while he was spread out on the bed with his fly open. And, god, it had been good. It had been _spectacular_ , and he had no idea what to do with that.

He thought about it, and then reached over for the remote on the bedside table to turn on the TV, and almost knocked the goddamn Glock off it.

Jesus, he'd forgotten about the gun completely. He stared at it. Joey had set it down there, he remembered that. And apparently he hadn't bothered to pick it up again. Maybe he'd figured Mitch ought to have _something_ within reach of his good arm, just in case Karpov tracked them here after all.

Mitch snorted at the thought and shook his head, thumbed the controls and swapped over to some inoffensive morning talk show. Just for the noise; just so wherever Joey was out in the suite, he'd know Mitch was awake.

 

 

It took another day, all told, for him to actually notice.

To be fair to Mitch, Joey was skittish as hell for about half that time. He came in a couple times, sneering, to leave Mitch a tray of room service and make snide jokes about having been promoted from a nurse to a housemaid—and then he left just as quick, and barely looked at Mitch at all.

But the thing was, he was just as stuck in here as Mitch. His own rules, sure, that they both had to lay low in here as long as they could; and there had to be a second TV in a penthouse suite this big, but that was about all it had going for it. Joey had never really struck Mitch as the type to take enforced inactivity lying down, and having Mitch there to snipe at couldn't be much of an improvement over an empty room. Except—

Except Joey didn't seem to hate it quite as much as Mitch had expected.

It was just an idle thought at first. Joey came in for an empty tray, bitched Mitch out for his ingratitude, and Mitch rolled his eyes and didn't give an inch, and somehow Joey didn't actually leave again. Mitch wondered, fighting to keep the amusement off his face, exactly how bored Joey had to be to prefer sitting in here with Mitch to, oh, anything else in the entire world he could have been doing.

And then Joey's phone rang.

Mitch might not even have noticed if he hadn't been looking at Joey already. But he was, and he saw it: the way Joey's shoulders knotted themselves up all at once, the flicker of tension that crossed his face. Joey was a pretty good actor, really; but compared to the actual relaxation he'd just barely been starting to show, the artificial version he plastered back onto his face to replace it, as he pulled the phone out of his pocket, suddenly looked painfully false.

"Well, well, what do you know," he murmured, holding it up and twiddling it a little in his hand. "Some of us still have work to do," and almost as soon as he'd finished the sentence he was vanishing again, door closing behind him.

Mitch couldn't pick out individual words; but the edge in Joey's tone as he answered the call was more than audible.

And suddenly Mitch was thinking about last time, the way Joey had been acting before and then after. He'd assumed Joey must have been dying to get out of here—but maybe he'd been wrong.

Not that it mattered. Joey Morolto's emotional health wasn't exactly his top priority, under the circumstances.

He just couldn't quite let it drop, that was all. It was like a court case, the ones that got under his skin; the ones where he'd missed something, where he could tell there was a bigger picture hanging there in front of him but he hadn't figured out how to bring it into focus.

And then, gradually, he began to realize he'd had the answer all along. Joey had already told it to him.

He hadn't believed it, that day Joey had said to him that he'd never wanted to be don—that he'd _made_ himself do it, because he had to, because there was nobody else. It had sounded like self-martyring bullshit; like the kind of thing somebody with the last name Morolto would tell themselves to justify whatever it was they'd already wanted to do. Joey had talked a good game, and Mitch might even have fallen for it if that door hadn't opened, if he hadn't seen that man beaten bloody and tied to a chair. Whatever narratives Joey had invented to let himself pretend what he was doing was okay, Mitch didn't have to buy into them.

But he was starting to think it might have been the truth.

Because now Joey was trying to pretend it wasn't.

He wasn't putting on a show about it, wasn't saying anything out loud. He answered the phone every single time it rang, no matter what expression Mitch caught crossing his face first. But he—he hated it.

He _hated_ it.

It was awful and fascinating at the same time, watching him force himself through the motions of it over and over again. And no wonder, Mitch found himself thinking. No wonder Joey had decided it made the most sense for him to take care of Mitch personally. This was the reason he hadn't wanted to give, when Mitch had asked: because he'd stay holed up in here forever, as far away from the shit creek his father had paddled him up as he could make it, if he thought he could get away with it.

But he couldn't, and he knew it. Because Patrick Walker was still on the hook for murder, and the Russian mob was still trying to kill them both; and Louis had figured the FBI wanted dirt on Karpov from Kurylenko, but if they were in contact with Karpov, too, then there had to be an even bigger fish on the line.

So here he was, _making_ himself. All the time, every day, because he didn't know what else to do.

And something about that thought pricked deeper than Mitch had expected it to. Something about that thought made Mitch want to shove Joey down onto this fucking king, and tell him to stop worrying about everything so much; that it wasn't his problem. That it didn't have to be his problem—that he could rest, at least for a while.

 

 

He took his shot after the third phone call.

He was steeling himself to follow Joey, that time, and for Joey to yell at him or something—but he got lucky, and Joey came back into the master bedroom after, mouth flat, tight as hell across the shoulders.

"Joey," Mitch said, and Joey's head came up, and for a second he looked startled. Like he'd been on autopilot; like he'd come back in here without thinking, like he hadn't meant to.

Too late now, Mitch thought smugly.

"Joey," he repeated. "Something wrong?"

Joey scowled at him, jammed the phone back into his pocket and ran a hand absently through his hair.

"Like you want to know," he said, caustic, lip curling. "Don't give me that crap, Mitch. You shouldn't ask questions you don't want to hear the answers to—and as I recall, you've been fairly adamant about keeping those pretty hands of yours clean."

Mitch raised his eyebrows and ignored the heat trying to crawl up his throat over—over _pretty_ , jesus.

"Thought it was contrary to your precious ethics," Joey sneered, "getting the inside scoop on all my dirty deeds. You'd have to write me up or something, wouldn't you?" He snorted. "Probably prosecute me yourself."

"I'm a defense attorney," Mitch reminded him mildly.

"Oh, I'm sure you'd make an exception for me," Joey said, deceptively light.

Mitch bit his lip. He could feel the frustration itching its way up his spine, the way it basically always did with Joey; but beneath that, it was—it bothered him, suddenly, that Joey didn't seem to understand.

"Yeah," he said aloud. "I have lines. But I only know where they are because I've already crossed them. When I was working for BL&L, I was—I let them drag me down a piece at a time. I let myself be fooled by the house, the car, the money, and by the time I came face-to-face with what I'd really been doing, who I'd really been working for, I was already in it up to my neck."

 _I'm not clean_ , he wanted to explain. _I'm trying to be, that's all. I'm trying all the time, but it's not because I'm spotless, it's because I never have been_ —

But Joey didn't seem to be listening to him anymore.

"Yeah?" he was murmuring, before Mitch was even done saying it, stalking closer, and Mitch felt suddenly hyperaware of the bed beneath him, the way he was seated on the edge of it, the angle of his hips. There was nothing obscene about any of it; it was just that it all _felt_ obscene, with Joey looking at him like that. "You get dirty sometimes, Mitch? You think that's news to me? Remember who you're talking to, here," and his smile was as thin and as sharp as a razor, hands already dropping—

"Joey, that's not what I," Mitch said, and then, helpless, "oh, _god_ —Joey, wait a second," but Joey wasn't waiting. He'd already caught Mitch by the waistband, fingers shoved in like he couldn't wait, couldn't stand it.

Like he thought this was going to drag Mitch down, too, and he wanted to make sure he saw it happen.

And there was something about that thought—about the expression on Joey's face, the bright hard look in his eyes—that Mitch didn't like at all. It was just that it was so hard to hang onto, so hard to open his mouth and talk about it, when Joey had just dropped to his knees between Mitch's thighs.

"Jesus Christ," Mitch said blankly, and Joey gave him that stinging knife-edge of a smile again and jerked his fly open.

The power of suggestion alone had gotten him halfway to hard, and it didn't take Joey more than a few strokes to urge him the rest of the way. And half of Mitch's brain was abruptly empty of anything that wasn't Joey's _mouth_ on him, jesus, jesus, he didn't even want to think about the noises he was making, blindly trying to shove himself down Joey's throat. But the other half was circling around the half-formed thought that Joey wasn't just doing this because he wanted to, because he liked to, because he enjoyed proving to himself that Mitch was stupid enough to let him.

He was doing it because he'd wanted Mitch to stop talking. To get distracted. Redirection—sleight of hand. Because he'd never liked it when Mitch started to figure him out, or cut too close, or got in his face when he wasn't in control of it.

At the absolute least, Mitch thought dimly, he did prefer a blowjob to Joey shooting at him.

He gasped for breath and squeezed his eyes shut, propping himself up on his trembling good arm, and—god, wait, he had to do something. Didn't he? He should push Joey off, make it clear this wasn't going to work, that Joey couldn't stop him from finishing their goddamn conversation with a cheap trick like this.

But something stopped him. A hunch, Ray would have said; intuition, Abby would have said. Because coming at Joey head-on never turned out the way Mitch was expecting it to. So maybe that wasn't the right tack after all. Maybe it never would have been. And maybe it was about time he tried something else.

God, but this would be easier if he could fucking _think_ —

He needed his good arm to hold himself up. But his bad arm wasn't completely useless, especially when he didn't have to move it very far. He reached out and slid his fingers into Joey's hair, curled them at the nape of Joey's neck and gripped a little; and Joey tensed under his hand but didn't stop doing whatever the hell he was doing with his tongue.

And it was all starting to pile up together in his head. Everything he'd been working out, a bit at a time, about Joey and what he did and why; and that it was awful, that Joey should have just walked away and Mitch knew it, but he still couldn't stop thinking about how _tiring_ that had to be. That Joey might be hiding not just Mitch in here, but himself, too, and that Mitch maybe wanted to tell him that was all right.

So when he finally got it together enough to gasp out a couple words, they weren't angry ones. He didn't use them to tell Joey to quit touching him, to leave him the hell alone.

He said, "Oh, god, Joey— _Joey_ , that's so fucking good. You're so—you're doing that so well, jesus, I can't believe how good you are—"

And Joey made an irritated noise around Mitch's cock that made Mitch's thighs shake, and pulled off sharply to say, "Jesus Christ, McDeere, will you shut the fuck up?"

But he couldn't stop Mitch from looking at him; and Mitch could see the hot color just starting to show, high on his cheeks, at the tips of his ears, and he knew— _knew_ , the same way he always knew it in the courtroom—that he was on the right track.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Sorry," McDeere said, wetting his lips, swallowing—and jesus, Joey thought, he looked like he was the one who'd been sucking somebody off. Must just have been that he'd been biting his mouth, that it was so red. "Sorry, just—please—"

And right, that was the point of all this. Because Joey had been looking for an opportunity to luxuriate in the knowledge of at least one fucking flaw in Mitch McDeere, and when one hadn't shown up in time, he'd made one out of thin air.

Except McDeere hadn't meant the apology, or had but couldn't stick to it. Because he did not shut the fuck up at all.

He lasted until Joey had ducked his head down again, opened up his mouth for the hot hard weight of McDeere's dick and sucked it down as far as he could, relishing the heavy press against his tongue, the way it filled his mouth—and then McDeere made a sharp, desperate noise in the back of his throat, and said, "Joey, fuck," and just kept going.

It was ridiculous. Embarrassing, by proxy. All the shit McDeere was saying, all this—all this _praise_ , and the filthier Joey got with his tongue, the more McDeere had to say. Like he didn't care that it was dirty, that it was cheap, that they were using each other; like he didn't care that Joey was making a mockery of him and all his principles, making him want this. Like he didn't know how it sounded, kneeling down here listening to him say over and over that Joey was so _good_ , doing such a good job, that he was perfect, that he was taking Mitch's dick so _well_ —

He wasn't listening to it. Not on purpose. It was just McDeere was so loud about it, that was all. Joey couldn't help hearing some of it.

And if it just so happened that he hadn't stopped again to tell McDeere to cut it out, if he'd squeezed his eyes shut and was sucking McDeere off so hard it was a struggle to remember to breathe—if he'd dropped a hand down just to grip his own straining cock through his slacks, because he couldn't stand not to anymore—well, judging by the noises McDeere was making up there, he wasn't about to call Joey on any of it.

Fuck.

Joey'd been looking forward to this, anticipating it, electric. Not just so he could show McDeere what was what, remind both of them that for all McDeere's big talk he wasn't that good at taking the high road when it came down to it. But just—just for the sake of doing it. Doing it, deliberate. Making it happen: in control, calling the shots, McDeere losing his mind up there and too desperate to have the sense to make Joey stop.

He should have known, maybe. Because it seemed like every goddamn time he tried to demonstrate that he had things handled, that he knew what he was doing, he only ended up in deeper shit.

But it was fine. McDeere liked blowjobs; film at eleven. Every idiotic babbling word spilling out of his wide-open trap was about that. None of it had anything to do with Joey, not really. He wasn't talking about the _actual_ job Joey was doing here, holding all this shit together with his bare hands, keeping McDeere's stupid ass alive without any goddamn help from the US Marshals or Louis Coleman or even McDeere himself.

But however loudly he told himself all that in his head, he couldn't quite drown McDeere out entirely.

It was almost a surprise, when McDeere came in his mouth. Joey had half a warning in the way McDeere's thighs shook, the sudden crack in his voice, the way his fucking fingers tightened on the back of Joey's neck—not shoving Joey down or fucking into his throat, because of course McDeere was too polite for that; just holding on. And then McDeere gasped and trembled, hips rolling, and Joey mostly managed to swallow all right.

He squeezed down on himself nice and hard, and carefully didn't come in his pants. After a few seconds the throb had died down a little, and he could let go without feeling like he'd shoot off on the next thing he brushed against. He eased off McDeere and wiped a little at his mouth, and McDeere hadn't moved his hand—it was tipped against Joey's jaw now, because Joey'd moved back a little too far for it to stay at his nape.

And then Joey got up, except McDeere still hadn't let go of him. Caught him by the collar of his shirt, and managed to sit up a little and grab him by the shoulder with the other hand, and so when Joey stood, it was—he was crowded in all close between McDeere's thighs, hunched over McDeere a little, McDeere's hands sliding in warm clumsy strokes to his waist.

"Come on," McDeere was murmuring breathlessly, "come on," and he'd hitched back a little on the bed so there was room for one of Joey's knees between his legs. And suddenly it was the goddamn shower all over again but worse, McDeere tugging him in against one of McDeere's thighs, rolling up into him so he couldn't do anything but gasp and swear and press his aching dick against McDeere.

Worse because they were facing each other this time, until Joey tipped his head down against McDeere's shoulder to fix that. And McDeere hadn't ever touched Joey's clothes before, hadn't had the chance; Joey had undressed himself, the one time it had happened. But now he was grabbing at Joey's fly before Joey could stop him, sliding his hand into the open V of it and rubbing his fingers along the whole hot damp length of Joey's dick, and Joey had to bite down on a gasp that wanted to come out harsh, dangerously wrecked.

Shit.

"Come on," McDeere said one more time, even softer. He was curling his fingers through Joey's hair again, and Joey wanted to knock his hand away but couldn't quite figure out how to do it, what with his hands busy clutching McDeere so Joey could rub off on him shamelessly. "You've been so good already—just a little more. That's it, that's it; come on. _Joey_ —"

And it was stupid, pure reckless self-indulgence; but for a split second, Joey fucked up and let himself believe it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

That time, Joey didn't leave.

Mitch woke up still on the bed, sprawled out, with a twinge in his bandaged shoulder that was going to turn into a throb as soon as he moved; and he was hot all along one side in a way he dimly recognized, a way that was familiar until his sluggish brain told him the other person on the bed with him was Joey.

He came all the way awake, then, and didn't move an inch. The sun was already up, soft light streaming in from between the drapes over the big east windows, but Joey was still fast asleep, and all Mitch could think was: good. He'd needed it.

It was half an hour at least, probably more like a whole hour, that Mitch got to lie there and just look at him, and try to decide how the hell he'd ended up here, and whether he minded that he had.

And then Joey's phone rang.

Joey lurched up and rubbed at his eyes, twisted to grab for his pocket and only then glanced over at Mitch, and his face went smooth and unreadable.

"Sorry to cut your beauty sleep short," he said, a little too fast, and was up and off the bed before Mitch could even tell Joey he'd already been awake.

He went out of the master bedroom to answer the phone, just like he always did. And Mitch sat there and bit at the inside of his cheek, and wondered what he was going to do now.

It was appropriate, he thought later, that his gaze happened to wander to the bedside table.

Because the Glock was still lying there, deceptively innocent. And just as he was sitting there looking at it, the door opened again—Mitch twisted his head, mouth half-open to say something about breakfast, and was stopped short by the look on Joey's face: cold and serious, jaw set.

"Get up," he said, terse, urgent. "They're coming."

"What?" Mitch said, blinking, and Joey didn't so much as pause—crossed the room toward him and grabbed a shirt off the top of the bureau on his way past, and started tugging one sleeve up Mitch's arm.

"Got guys on the lookout," Joey said. "Couple blocks in every direction, the lobby, the usual. Maybe Karpov worked it out, maybe something tipped them off. Point is, we got fibbies on the way."

"Fib—the FBI?" Mitch said blankly.

"Ding ding ding," Joey said, flat, with a sour, grim little twist showing at the corner of his mouth.

"But they—are you sure?"

Joey paused in the middle of tugging the shirt around to jam Mitch's other wrist into the armhole, and gave him a withering look. "You think my guys don't know how to pick feds out of a crowd? Are you kidding me?" He snorted, disdainful. "Not that they're putting much effort into it. No need for cover, when they're expecting to raid this place and come out with yours truly." He shook his head, and then started moving again, easing the second sleeve up Mitch's good arm, tugging the shoulders and collar into place.

He'd just put his fingers to a button when Mitch knocked his hands away. "I got it," he said, "this part I can do," and Joey put his hands up in a show of surrender and then turned away—headed to the bathroom, probably, checking for evidence to dispose of or something.

And it was that, maybe, thinking about evidence and things left behind, that had Mitch pausing halfway through a button and turning back toward the bedside table where the gun lay.

The gun that was an FBI-issue service weapon; that belonged to an agent who was directly involved with Karpov, one way or another.

And what were the odds that he wasn't involved with this, too—with the FBI showing up on Joey's doorstep all of a sudden? Probably pretty low, Mitch thought. Even if it was a coincidence, or—or it was just that Peterson had tipped off an agent who was clean, he must at least have known it was happening.

Mitch buttoned that last button, and then reached out with only a little bit of a wince and picked up the gun. Better to leave it there, or somewhere else? Make a statement, or make it look like just another piece of evidence?

He was still considering their options, looking around the room, when Joey came back out; and he glanced at Joey without really seeing him, and then looked again.

Joey had stopped a stride from the bathroom doorway. His hands were at his sides, relaxed, but there was—there was something tense about his shoulders, the way he was holding his head. His face was blank, thoroughly expressionless, and he wasn't taking his eyes off Mitch.

Mitch, and the gun.

Mitch stared at him. Surely he didn't think Mitch was—was going to _use_ it.

Mitch stood up, slow. Joey didn't move. Neither of them had looked away, and Mitch couldn't have guessed what Joey might be thinking if he'd had a hundred years to try.

And then Mitch turned away and leaned over, and set the gun down square in the middle of the bed, flawless neatly-embroidered coverlet dipping smoothly down under the weight of it.

When he turned back around, Joey looked just the same; he was still watching Mitch, and there was a hint of a frown in the angle of his brows, a tiny dip forming just over his nose. And then he wet his lips and said, "Come on already. My guys'll be through to clean up a little before they get here. And it's not like it's a crime to rent a nice suite."

He turned and went out. Mitch followed him, and it was the first time he'd even been outside the master bedroom, whole penthouse suite laid out in front of him that he'd barely even seen, but somehow he couldn't make himself look away from Joey.

"Joey," he said.

"Good thinking, Mitch," Joey tossed over his shoulder, brisk and breezy, halfway to the door. "Got to be a serial number or something on that piece, right? Tie it right back to the FBI. Somebody's going to have some awkward questions to answer when they storm in here looking for me and find that in here—"

"Joey," Mitch said again, and Joey had his hand on the door, already twisting the handle; Mitch lengthened his strides and caught up, pressed his hand flat against the door and held it shut.

Joey was caught between him and the door, trapped by the curve of his arm—but he didn't turn around to shove Mitch away.

"Did you really think I was going to shoot you?"

"Would've made sense," Joey said, and Mitch couldn't see his face but almost recoiled anyway at his tone: even, bland, excruciatingly conversational. "FBI finds you standing over Joey Morolto's dead body, that's the easiest pitch in the world. You could've sold it, no problem."

Mitch shook his head, baffled. "And you think I would have. That we're doing—whatever it is we're doing, and you _still_ think I'd—"

Joey did turn, then, before he could even finish the sentence; turned, and glanced at Mitch over his shoulder, eyebrows raised just so high and no higher, ghost of a smile on his mouth—but his eyes were like ice.

"Oh, are we doing something?" he said, mild, as if the idea were news to him and not particularly gripping news at that.

And then he opened the door, a sudden sharp tug, and Mitch was too startled to think, to push back—he opened it and moved aside to let it swing, stepped out, and left Mitch standing there in the doorway, watching him go.

 

 

* * *

 

 

McDeere wasn't stupid: he followed Joey downstairs quick enough, once he realized Joey wasn't fooling around.

He followed Joey downstairs and he kept his mouth shut. Got in the car, when it pulled up, and if he wanted to make his own arrangements, get dropped off somewhere or call Coleman or whatever, he was going to have to ask; Joey was done coddling him.

Besides, McDeere didn't need coddling anymore. He was still bandaged up, his shoulder still hurt, he needed help to put a shirt on—fine. But he could stand on his own two feet, didn't need help eating or moving around as long as he took it slow enough. He could be released from Joey's tender care, as long as he didn't do anything particularly stupid, and there were even odds Karpov still thought he was dead, for the moment.

He was safe enough. He'd be safe enough, with Joey's guys looking after him.

And whatever it was he'd gotten out of—out of letting Joey touch him like that, he wasn't going to need it anymore. He wasn't stuck in the same room with the same guy, he didn't have to lie there and let Joey feel him up to have half a shot at an orgasm. Just because he hadn't ever quite turned Joey down, that didn't make it a thing.

That didn't make it a thing, and now McDeere knew better than to try to make it a thing, and that was that.

And Joey still had plenty to look forward to, after all. Needling McDeere with it, when he forgot his place or got in Joey's face. Threatening him with it—not for real, just enough to make him squirm. Or maybe he'd hang on to it: not mention it at all for months, until McDeere'd started to think he never would, and then drop a reminder like a bomb right when it had the best chance of landing hard.

Once McDeere and his wife had sorted themselves out, even. Because he'd call his wife in Kentucky, one of these days, and they'd talk it through, whatever it was McDeere had fucked up; McDeere knew how to make a case, knew how to close an argument. In front of her, maybe. Oblique, nothing she'd notice but McDeere would catch his meaning. Make him sweat a little. Keep him on edge, waiting for it, knowing Joey could tear his perfect little life back down any time he wanted to.

Yeah, Joey thought. That would be good. That would be satisfying. He'd enjoy that a lot.

He closed his eyes, and rubbed at his forehead with the backs of two knuckles. He had a bit of a headache coming on, maybe—going from all that bright morning light to the inside of this car, tinted windows and all. That was probably it.

God, he was tired.

He glanced up for a second, idle. McDeere still hadn't said a word; for all Joey knew, he'd fallen asleep over there.

But when Joey looked, it was—McDeere wasn't asleep at all. He was looking right back at Joey. Watching him, with a funny thoughtful look on his face that Joey didn't like much.

"What's your problem?" he spat, sneering.

"Just trying to decide something," McDeere said evenly.

"Oh?" Joey said, looking away. "And what's that?"

"Whether you have any idea what the hell you're doing," McDeere said.

Joey raised an eyebrow at him. Interesting choice of words, coming from the guy who got himself caught and crushed halfway to a pulp by the Russian mob.

He said as much, after letting the silence stretch enough to show it wasn't anything to him one way or the other.

And McDeere tilted his head and said, "So why did you come for me?"

Joey rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, Mitch. How many times do we have to go through this? I told you—"

"Yeah, you've told me a lot of things," McDeere agreed. "But there's some things I haven't told you, and I think it's about time you let me. I said the other day I've got lines; you know that already. But the reason I've got them, the reason I drew them for myself, isn't because—" He stopped, mouth pinching a little. "It isn't because I'm spotless, and it isn't because I think I'm better than anybody on the other side of them. It's because I know I might cross them. It's because I have before, when I let myself. And I would again, probably, for the right reason."

Joey narrowed his eyes. The fuck was that supposed to mean?

"And I don't know why," McDeere was saying, "but apparently you seem to think that shooting you in the face after you saved my life is on the right side of those lines for me. And—"

He paused again, and shifted his weight—leaned out of his seat across from Joey, with an absent little grimace when the movement pulled at his wounded shoulder, and slid over next to Joey instead; and then he was—he set his hand on Joey's thigh, broad warm palm burning right through Joey's slacks.

"And that this isn't," McDeere finished.

"What the fuck are you—"

McDeere didn't let him get it out. He picked that hand up off Joey's leg, which was a relief until it turned out to be so he could catch Joey under the chin.

"You thought what happened in the penthouse suite had to stay in the penthouse suite," McDeere murmured. "Is that it? You got what you could out of it while it lasted, and you thought I'd leave it there. That I'd want to, once I had the chance." He tilted his head. "Thing is, Joey, I don't know if you know this, but I've never been all that good at letting things go."

And then he was—he kissed Joey, before Joey could even figure out what to say, how to stop him. And Christ, maybe this was how McDeere had felt: pinned down in that bed, hot for it, feeling too good to say no even to an idea as bad as Joey Morolto.

Because if Joey had thought about it—not that he had, but—he'd have figured McDeere for polite kisses, soft and careful, pleasant. But McDeere shifted his hand, gripped Joey by the nape of the neck and tilted his face up for it, and the shit he was doing with his tongue was fucking _obscene_ —

McDeere pulled back a little. "You're an asshole," he murmured against Joey's cheek. "But you're not getting rid of me that easily."

Joey closed his eyes, and caught his breath, and tried to ignore his hammering heart.

This was stupid. It wasn't going to work out. McDeere was going to regret this; Joey probably was, too.

"So what I'm hearing is you're planning on making it _hard_ ," he said instead, sleazy as he could get it, and dropped a hand into McDeere's lap; and McDeere laughed, low and soft, and moved into it at the same time, and then kissed him again.

 

 


End file.
